2000 Great Songs #1466: Teenage FBI
After a rocky start trying to get into the lo-fi to a fault early/mid-90s records from Guided By Voices , I learned to love the aesthetic, appreciating Robert Pollard's delirious pop skills despite the half-assed (at best) production and performances, hearing the songs as blueprints for properly-produced tracks I could hear only in my imagination. (There's a reason this is the 11th GbV track to make the list, tied with The Kinks & The Who .) So it was both scary and exciting when the band brought on The Cars ' Ric Ocasek to produce 1999's Do The Collapse . This time, I didn't need to imagine a fully-formed song; Ocasek took care of that. And I ended up absolutely adoring the opening track "Teenage FBI." Sure, it sounds more like a Cars song (particularly the new wave synth flourishes), Pollard actually singing like a seasoned pro with supporting back-up vocals, but just drop-dead perfect indie pop. You could tell Pollard had only bothered writing his ...
