Guided By Voices - Devil Between My Toes

GBV's debut album back in print for the first time since 1993, and with the original artwork to boot - not sure why they bothered to change it on that first re-press: it's perfect. There are many GBV albums, varying flirtations with fidelity and abstraction, melody and perversion, and yet there's a consistent through-line of absolute and utter and total Guided By Voices-ness that's so singular and distinct it's strange to think there was ever a point when it had to be imagined into existence. Devil Between My Toes is where it started (if you don't count that first EP), and guess what? It was unbeatable from the get go - Old Battery: boom. Off we go into the powerpop oblivion. It's been a while since i've listened to these songs, and i'd forgotten that they were actually pretty well recorded, a lot cleaner sounding (all things being relative) than later, better known records (Artboat aside). There's some classic Pollardian titling going here, too: A Portrait Destroyed By Fire, 3 Year Old Man, Bread Alone++. And of course, there's the rare jangling of Hey Hey, Spaceman and the Captain's Dead ending, a GBV best-of staple i'd venture, The Cars meets British Invasion template in instantly perfect form. Total classic.