So what of this recording technique? They recorded on 4-track tape, with a limited coterie of confederates, trained only in the knotted-guitar chord frustration of the often vexing experience of small-scale recording in the privacy of a cramped bunker. For those who warmed their ears on The Beatles and George Martin’s limited multi-track bliss though, this was decidedly different.

To those uninitiated with modern day self-recording — with what the prevailing scribes termed “lo-fi” — Guided By Voices could sound a bit rough, and at times almost poor. Alien Lanes though, was an upgrade on the slapdash, but flawlessly written hazy pop encyclopedia, that was Bee Thousand.

After all the good feelings and copy that trailed in Bee Thousand's wake, Guided By Voices seemed to take their next album a bit more seriously; and it remains one of the quintessential examples of 4-track recording.

Alien Lanes is a swift flash of rock’s long history — garage, British invasion, power pop, psych, folk nonsense, punk, and post-punk — buoyed by the seemingly ever-present humming buzz of an ungrounded chord. It was a brilliant compendium of musical high water marks and rock impressionism; and they, all the while, demonstrated a staggering ability to sound salient while looking toward rock’s rich past without donning the Nehru coat of revivalism.

Sadly, Alien Lanes was the last of Guided By Voices’ home-recorded albums. Robert Pollard and his rotating cast of associates continued recording at the speed of sound, hitting the mark often (Waved Out (solo), Mag Earwhig!, Speak Kindly of Your Volunteer Fire Department (with guitarist Doug Gillard)), and also producing their fair share of messes.

Though they/Robert Pollard bounced from the ignominy of self-recording to the center of Ric Okasek’s glass box, they/he would never again capture the immediacy, the brevity, or the laconic raw nerve that made Alien Lanes one of the last great albums of the Twentieth Century — a record that sounded as if it could tell the long and labyrinthine history of rock and roll in the space of 28 well paced shocks.