Bee Thousand

Bee Thousand
Studio album by Guided by Voices
Released	June 21, 1994
Recorded	Various places in Dayton, Ohio, with recordings pulled from as far back as the early 1980s
Genre	Noise pop, psychedelic rock, indie rock
Length	36:35
Label	Scat
Guided by Voices chronology
Vampire on Titus (1993) Bee Thousand (1994) Alien Lanes (1995)
Alternative cover
Bee Thousand was reissued in 2004 as Bee Thousand: The Director's Cut.

Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic
Chicago Tribune
Encyclopedia of Popular Music
Entertainment Weekly	B+
Mojo
NME	7/10
Rolling Stone
The Rolling Stone Album Guide
Spin
The Village Voice	B−

Bee Thousand is the seventh album by American indie rock band Guided by Voices. It was released on June 21, 1994. After its release the band became one of the more prominent groups associated with the "lo-fi" genre, a movement defined by the relatively poor recording quality of audio releases. Musically, the album draws inspiration from British Invasion-era rock music and punk rock. Following the release of Bee Thousand, the band began to attract interest from other record labels, eventually signing with Matador for their next album.

Guided by Voices is a Dayton, Ohio-based band formed in 1983. Although by 1992 the band had released five full-length albums (not including their 1986 debut EP, Forever Since Breakfast), Guided by Voices was not a band in a conventional sense; its line-up was extremely loose, consisting of whoever of a group of friends showed up to short notice recording sessions. Robert Pollard thought of Guided by Voices as more of a "songwriter's guild" than a band, and also said that "Whoever could come over would play. [...] It was just a bunch of friends who could occasionally get together so it didn't really feel like a band."

Bee Thousand was to be the original band's final album. Pollard was close to disbanding Guided by Voices by 1993, due to financial constraints and pressure to focus more on his family and teaching career; Pollard has also stated that the band was nearly broken up as early as 1991, during the creation of Propeller. Pollard was also struggling with writing for a follow-up record to Vampire on Titus and Propeller, which had been the band's two most noticed records yet. However, it occurred to him to "deconstruct" and "reconstruct" the band's older, unused material into new songs.

Unlike some of the band's earlier releases, Bee Thousand was not recorded in a studio, but rather on four track machines or other primitive home recording devices in the garages and basements of various band members. Moreover, many of the demo takes of the songs were the ones that were used for the album. Due in part to both of these factors, several unusual errors are present in the album's recording and mixing; for example, the guitar track drops out at one point in "Hardcore UFO's". The band's choice to use inexpensive recording devices was initially a matter of economics, but eventually the band grew to prefer the sound. Pollard said that: