Sweating the Plague
2019; 12 songs, 38 minutes
Dr M:
I’ve been casually listening to Dan’s “GBV Gems” playlist on Spotify this past week, which has 182 songs on it. You might ask, how can any band have 182 great songs? Hey, the Beatles only recorded 188 original songs during their eight-year career and even a few of those are klunkers (listen to Flying, for example, which is a throwaway piece of poo). Well, if you’re GBV, you can accumulate 182 legit great tunes. A fair amount of it has to do with the fact that Pollard writes so many fricking songs. I went back to the GBV database and (applying the proper filters) I figured that there are 2,858 original recorded GBV songs as of March 2023. Tom Scholz from Boston only has to write 2,812 more songs to catch up.
Speaking of insane productivity, this time around, I’m looking at Sweating the Plague from 2019. This is the third (and final) GBV album from that year. Sweating the Plague was released on October 25, 2019, just a few months before the whole COVID shit started. Given the album’s title, I don’t know if Robert Pollard might be considered the new Nostradamus (a “Newstradamus,” if you will), but some say that the lyrics to Pimple Zoo predicted Russia’s annexation of the Crimea in 2014. You judge for yourself.
This album is short by latter-day GBV standards - only 12 songs in 37 minutes. It starts out with Downer, a good staccato song with some weird chords, and proceeds to entertain throughout - with a few exceptions. I’m glad to see that the album makes minimal use of the “random chunk” songwriting approach that I’ve been railing about. Most songs set a certain mood/tempo and stick with it to the end. Mother’s Milk Elementary is a pretty good tune that starts out with an unusual solo vocal by Pollard (whose voice is sounding pretty gravelly). It loses a bit of momentum toward the end, where it jumps around to various bits, but it’s pretty satisfying overall. The Very Second is another good one.
There are only a few less-than-stellar songs on Sweating the Plague. Tiger on Top is “chunky,” and while My Wrestling Days are Over has a nice title, the song isn’t all that great. Sweating the Plague ends with Sons of the Beard, an ambitious sounding multi-part song with some Styx-like Dennis DeYoung synth in the middle. Not my fave.
Sweating the Plague is probably in the middle of my “deserves repeated listens” list. It’s one of the better post-2012 GBV albums I’ve heard so far.
Libbers:
I don’t like this album. It was released as I neared the end of my listening project and the first of all the music that I flat out couldn’t connect with. It’s depressing and hard to listen to. A momentum killer. Wise at least about itself, the opening song, “Downer,” sets an unsettling tone, and another song declares itself--accurately--as “Unfun Glitz.” You know what no one ever thought? Pollard should do an a Capella number. Yet that’s basically what he’s given us with “Mother’s Milk Elementary,” delivering predictable results. Sweating the Plague sounds like a Circus Devils album, my least favorite of all the Pollard side projects. Maybe a better question should be": why is this such a stinker? The title makes you think Pollard produced this mid-Covid, with all its concomitant anxieties and weirdness, but it was actually released in 2019, when only racooon dogs had ever heard of the novel coronavirus SARS CoVi 2. It is true that the years leading up to Covid weren’t exactly fun times politically, maybe Pollard was reacting to that. Or maybe he just had an off album; every genius is entitled to a clunker or two. Remember The Clash gave us Cut the Crap and David Bowie forced us to listen to everything he did after 1987. Are there any highlights worth sweating this plague for? “Street Party” is not a bad song actually, and “Heavy Like the World” sounds reliably like midpack GBV. I’m chagrined by Mike’s postive review. I’ll give it a relisten. Right now I am listening to the full Boston Spaceships oeuvre, all of which I like better than this.
Devil Between my Toes
1987; 14 songs, 31 minutes
Libbers:
To me, this feels like the stuff Pollard had to free himself from to become Pollard. Same year as Sandbox, ao these 26 songs are probably from the same period. It would be two years until a third album. Devil in my Toes seems like a fine, if not remarkable album. This one seems to have a lot of guitar songs without lyrics, although the guitar stuff is not as bright as future GBV stuff would be, not nearly as charming. Particularly awful is a song called Artboat, whose self conscious title suggests the band sort of had an idea what was going on with the music. And yet... There he is singing, “Watching Hank’s Little Fingers,” a genuine song, not quite a heart-lifter, but heart-lifter adjacent. The album’s closing track is “Captain Said,” is a song I love and a mainstay of my Human Amusements playlist. When I hear it in this context I feel like the Captain has indeed spoken and righted his ship properly at last. Would I have noticed this song among the well meaning yet not very noteworthy album without having heard Human Amusements first? Honestly, I am not sure. (Or as the kids say, “If I’m being honest...”) It’s a great song and I recognize the earnestness of Pollard’s vocals, the fuzzying up of the sound, the crackling back tracks. It’s an exciting close either way and bodes well for what’s to come. Mike noticed it as a standout so I think we’re on the right track. “Die Hard” is good. “A Portrait Destroyed by Fire” is really, really awful—it’s actually kind of pretentious which is something Pollard is very rarely if ever accused of. You can hear GBV kicking to be born on this album.
Dr M:
I was correcting student papers a couple of days ago and found three that were AI generated. It was fairly easy to spot, as their papers weren’t about the specific thing I’d asked them to read and comment upon. I have no idea how these students thought I wasn’t going to spot their clumsy attempts at cheating. One part of the assignment, for example, was to comment on whether there were any possibilities of compromise in a particular archaeology-related situation where two parties could not agree. The student gave me a generic paragraph on “how to compromise,” without any reference to the materials I’d asked them to read. They must have thought either 1) I hadn’t heard about AI-generated content (which is all over the news) or 2) I’m a complete idiot. In the spirit of my AI-generated irritation, I have kindly asked ChatGPT to act as a guest reviewer for this week and he/she has provided us with a few bland and noncommittal comments (see below).
Now on to actual human-generated opinions. This time we’re going back to the birth of GBV, Devil Between My Toes. I have been curious about this album since I’d reviewed Sandbox (their second album), a couple of months ago. I wasn’t a fan. Most of Sandbox sounded like generic ear-friendly “alternative rock” from the late ‘80s (i.e., not particularly interesting). Maybe Sandbox was a misstep? We shall see…
A lot of first albums are a bit derivative, as the songwriter(s) haven’t found their voice yet and are working from what they’ve been listening to for the first twenty-something years of their lives. Every two-bit heavy rock band from the early ‘70s, for example, was imitating Led Zeppelin or Black Sabbath to some extent, but only the best of them found their own path. The first song on Devil Between My Toes, Old Battery, sounded a helluva lot like Wire, so I thought we were in for something similar for the rest of the album. I was wrong though – Devil Between My Toes is an extremely eclectic album that goes from experimental to “friendly,” with pretty decent results overall. I get the picture that GBV didn’t yet know what it wanted to be and scooped up a whole bunch of different types of songs and crammed ‘em together for this album.
There are five instrumentals on Devil Between My Toes, which is unusual for GBV. I honestly can’t think of any others in the hundreds of songs I’ve heard so far. Most (e.g., Artboat and A Proud and Booming Industry) are experimental sounding and fairly out there. I liked them though – no complaints. Other tunes are poppy and friendly sounding (Hank’s Little Fingers, Hey, Hey, Spaceman) and these work too. The odd, eclectic nature of Devil Between My Toes is best expressed by the last song on the album, Captain’s Dead. The song starts out as an upbeat rocker with distorted guitars, and I was prepared to hear a straight up punk song. Then, out of nowhere, the song starts up with Byrds-like harmonizing vocals. Huh?
Despite the fact that Devil Between My Toes is pretty scattershot, it’s a damn good listen. It makes you wonder what happened with the next album, Sandbox, which abandons most of the weirdness. If I were to guess, GBV was looking to expand their base, and thought the best way to do it was to become the next REM.
Special Guest Review by ChatGPT (or ChatGBV, in this case):
“As an AI language model, I cannot speak for all fans of Guided by Voices (GBV) or any particular album. However, I can provide some general information about the critical reception and fan opinions of the album ‘Devil Between My Toes’ by Guided by Voices.
‘Devil Between My Toes’ was GBV's debut album, released in 1987. The album has generally received positive reviews from music critics and is considered an important release in the indie rock genre. The album's lo-fi recording quality and eclectic mix of punk, pop, and experimental styles have earned it a reputation as a cult classic.
Many GBV fans consider ‘Devil Between My Toes’ to be one of the band's best albums, citing its raw energy, catchy melodies, and unconventional songwriting as key strengths. Some fans appreciate the album's lo-fi production values, which they see as adding to the album's charm and authenticity.
However, as with any album, there are also fans who do not enjoy ‘Devil Between My Toes’ as much as other GBV releases, citing issues such as the album's uneven quality or the fact that it does not showcase the band's later, more polished sound. Ultimately, opinions on the album will vary depending on individual tastes and preferences.”
Suitcase -
Failed experiments and Trashed Aircraft
2000; 100 songs, 3 hours & 45 minutes
Dr M:
Whew. I just listened to Suitcase: Failed Experiments and Trashed Aircraft. All 100 songs. I make a point of actively and purposefully listening to all the albums before writing my reviews, so Pollard owes me a beer for devoting nearly four hours to getting through this collection, which was originally a four CD box set from back in the olden days when people bought CDs. A good beer – not some cheap crap.
As the title suggests, Suitcase consists of bits and pieces of songs, most fully formed or nearly so. At the very least, Suitcase highlights Pollard’s ridiculous creative output, but is the collection worth a damn? That’s a tough one to answer. I suppose if you’re a GBV superfan, you’ll eat up anything that’s made available. Pollard probably has an album of him grunting on the toilet if you simply can’t get enough content. Would someone who doesn’t fervently eat up every GBV release like it as well?
There’s a lot to like on Suitcase. Some of the songs are acoustic, some consist of solo electric guitar, while others are with a full band. There are even a number of live tracks thrown in. About 25 percent of the material is decent stuff, particularly some of the acoustic numbers. On Short Wave, a haunting acoustic tune, stood out for me. There were a few other songs that grabbed my attention. Sabotage is an uncharacteristic bluesy jam that worked well. Long Way to Run and United were pleasant, poppy sounding tunes. I Can See it in Your Eyes was a good one that I swore was a cover of The Who’s “So Sad About Us” for about the first 20 seconds. The vocals on that one sound like super-early GBV, so I guess we can forgive them for being derivative there.
About half of the collection is – as advertised – tepid-to-decent ideas for songs that apparently never got off the ground or were greatly modified in their finished form. Many of these were OK, while others were apparently abandoned for a reason. A portion of Suitcase is borderline unlistenable. Driving in the U.S. of A consists of Pollard’s distorted, screamy vocals over a single chord. Invest in British Steel is a boring instrumental jam. Big Trouble and Gift are songs that were apparently just made up on the spot. I could have done without that kind of stuff.
Though I’m not 100 percent familiar with all of GBV’s catalog (yet), some of the tunes represent early versions of songs that appeared on their regular albums. The early version of Buzzards and Dreadful Crows, for example, is pretty awful compared to the finished product, which is one of my favorite GBV songs. Portions of Rocking Now were incorporated into Wrecking Now from Do the Collapse. Both give you a bit of insight into the GBV songwriting process.
Try to Find You is probably my favorite track on the whole collection. It’s a live recording of a lackluster song. About one minute into the recording, you hear a conversation between two women who are standing right in front of the mic being used to record the performance. They apparently hadn’t seen each other in a while and start talking about their families. Both women have little girls, etc. Neither one is paying the least bit of attention to the show. Another non-musical highlight of the collection is that each track is accompanied by a fake band name. Seems that Pollard was sitting around thinking of dumb band names and decided to attribute each one of the tracks on Suitcase to someone other than GBV. Some of my favorites were Brown Smoothies, Ceramic Cock Einstein, Ghost Fart, and Urinary Track Stars. They’re not all scatological (e.g., Too Proud to Practice) but I appreciate a good poop joke as much as the next guy.
Considering that it’s an album of castoffs and various miscellaneous bits, Suitcase isn’t all that bad, though it’s certainly not something you’d put on heavy rotation. As with most GBV output, it could do with a fair amount of culling to make it stronger. Suitcase is probably best played in the background while you’re washing dishes or talking about your kids with someone you haven’t seen in a while.
Libbers:
Only an artist as self assured—or possibly indifferent to his reputation—would release an album of half finished thoughts, outtakes, detritus both fauna and flora, like this album. Only a cruel taskmaster would make someone else listen to it and write about it. I hear a lot of what’s to come--Hell, “Pluto the Skate” is here, pretty much fully formed, as I remember it from the Boston Spaceships album. “Gayle” is definitely some other GBV song I’ve heard elsewhere. Actually, no, it sounds like “How Soon is Now” by The Smiths. Same with “Rocking Now,” not that it sounds like Smiths, but definitely became some GBV song later in life with different lyrics. When sung it sounds like “She’s Wrecking” which is sort of interesting, and the refrain, “She’s repeating now,” is from some other song for sure. Or ended up in some other song. “Try to Find You” seems to be a song recorded live, with a great GBV song in the background and two fans talking one another loudly to be heard over the music in the foreground. At first it’s funny, then it’s irritating and then it’s sad. This is what it must be like to perform in a room where you’re not a star, where the crowd hasn’t come to see you. The song sounds great but you can can barely hear it over the inane chattering of the two fans who discuss their friends and other matters. It’s almost beside the point to think about each song individually—it’s more interesting to think about it as part of the evolution of an artist. People go to museums to look at line sketches by Da Vinci, why not listen to songs which amount to Pollard’s line sketches. I am more impressed with the way Mike has met the challenge. I didn’t know each song has a fake band name attached because that’s not how Spotify presents them. I don’t have the heart to tell him there are three more “Suitcase” albums.
Earthquake Glue
2003; 15 songs, 45 minutes
Dr. M:
The album starts out with a winner, My Kind of Soldier, so we’re off to a good start. After a bit of a blip with the so-so song, My Son, My Secretary, And My Country, we get into a couple of good rockers, I’ll Replace You With Machines and She Goes Off At Night. Both songs highlight GBV at their “Whoiest” (i.e, obviously influenced by The Who) and sound like they were written about five minutes after Pollard finished listening to Quadrophenia. Seriously, listen to both and picture Roger Daltrey singing them, swinging around his mic and wearing that ridiculous bare-chested fringe jacket. I like The Who a helluva lot, so I have no beef with a band that gets inspiration from them, but Pollard is pushing it a bit here. Thankfully, the remainder of the album keeps Pollard’s obvious Who infatuation in the background.
Useless Inventions is a perfectly crafted pop song and is the obvious highlight of Earthquake Glue. I’ve been humming it for the past couple of days so that says something. Apparently, however, the greater populace doesn’t agree with me, as the song has only 72k listens. Doesn’t make sense to me. I was expecting this track to be in the millions, as it represents Pollard at his best. The Earthquake Glue track with the most listens is The Best of Jill Hives, with 600k listens – yeah, it’s a pretty good tune but nowhere near as good as Useless Inventions. What the hell?
Overall, Earthquake Glue is a “turdless” album, filled with pretty solid offerings. Most of the songs are enjoyable and I can see myself returning to it in the future. If I were to have something negative to say about it, I can see some hints of the “chunky” songwriting that I’ve been complaining about from the later albums (e.g., Tumblers and Goggles by Rank). Songs that fit into this category have bits and pieces that don’t seem to fit together, and tempo changes that interrupt the pace and mood of the song. Apology in Advance is a prime example. Beat Your Wings and Dead Cloud are also in that vein. They’re not as disconcerting as the chunky tunes from Tremblers and Goggles by Rank, but I can perhaps see the initial hints of it coming down the pipeline.
Libbers:
Starts out with “My Kind of Soldier.” This is a really great album that I somehow missed the first time going through. I have listened three times straight through now, twice in a row. A couple of Human Amusement winners, but also some nice little ditties like “Secret Star,” “Useless Inventions,” and “Dead Cloud.” Weird horns, like at a high school band concert start “My son, My Secretary and my Country,” which has one of those titles that my phone goes dark on before completing the scroll and I am sad to admit I noticed does not contain an Oxford Comma, because unlike the twee chaps in Vampire Weekend, I rather do give a fuck about such things. “I’ll Replace you with Machines” has big GBV vibes at first but peters out before too long, and “Beat Your Wings” has that downbeat GBV feel which I like. “Useless Inventions” is followed by “Dirty Water,” which seems to even feature a bluesy harmonica. Right? I’m no musicianer so maybe that’s a different instrument, but to me it sounds like the start of Chicago blues song. “Best of Jill Hives” is an all timer, the only GBV to penetrate my consciousness prior to ever having heard of them because Dave Lucas put it on a mix CD for me, a little gem sandwiched between a Pixies song of dubious provenance called Bang Thwok and a forgettable song by a forgettable band I think (though I may have forgotten) called The Basement Jax. “Best of Jill Hives” is cinematic, grand even, and memorable, which is why I recalled hearing it before even though at the time I didn’t pay much attention. “Dead Cloud” comes next and it’s just great. So are a bunch of others which I was too distracted to type the names of. Album ends with “Of Mites and Men,” a good enough song and one of Pollard’s all timer titles.
La La Land
2023; 11 songs, 35 minutes
Leebors:
I got a lot of letters from you all (weirdly, not emails) that are like, Libbers, enough of your pontificating, just listen to the albums and tell us what you hear. Okay. La La Land Starts strong with “Another Day To Heal,” a stately late era GBV number, which finds Pollard in fine voice. Moves on to “Released into Dementia” which suggests to me Pollard might be thinking about what be coming next for him. This too is a pleasant enough song. “Ballroom Etiquette” moves along with a synth horn section and some tension—makes me think of XTC even. I really like this song—but would I ever seek it out if this was a new band? I’m not sure. I wonder if my GBV belly needs to be fed and when it gets nourishment, it’s happy. The Eponymous “LA La Land” is as forgettable as its basically unsearchable title. I wonder why Pollard used this cliche; like naming a song “Society.” You can’t search for it because so many other bands have used it. “Queen of Spaces” colors Pollard in a more pensive mood. The song doesn’t quite develop from the chords being noodled about on guitar. “Slowly on the Wheel” works slowly on my nerves. A lot of these songs suffer from a sort of existence paralysis. Not so of “Cousin Jackie,” a song in a several parts, which ends with a bomp-awomping instead of lyrics. It’s a fun song. The problem with many of these songs is that they are equal parts annoying and fun, and you never know what you’re going to get going in. “Wild Kingdom” you sort of feel grateful to when the annoying parts end. I kind of zoned out on some of these songs but “Face Eraser” and “Pockets,” the final two songs demanded my attention. I didn’t feel too inspired until I realize the song “Face Eraser” might be about an eraser that removes people’s faces or it might be something that Pollard is concerned about, facing a legacy that disappears?
Doc Em:
My recurring anxiety dream is that I’m trying to get across campus to teach a class but I keep getting lost and detoured, and time is running out. I’ll take a route through a building to get to my destination only to find that I’ve popped out the other side of the building in the wrong place and I now have no idea where I’m at, class is starting in two minutes, and there are crowds of people getting in my way. Reviewing the entire GBV output is a similar experience. You think that you have a handle on what’s out there, then you turn around and boom, there’s four 100-song collections of miscellaneous stuff you didn’t know about. Then one day you go online to find out that GBV has dropped yet another album, and it’s their seventh album this year. The next day you look on the GBV database and see that there are 128 EPs that you haven’t listened to yet. Whew - maybe I’ll snuggle up on the couch with some chamomile tea and a romance novel to wind down a bit.
Speaking of endless output, we’re now faced with GBV’s first album of 2023, La La Land. It’s been three months since this album came out, so I’m anticipating another one any day now. I’ve been interested to hear whether La La Land is any good, given that it comes right after my favorite GBV whipping boy, Tremblers and Goggles by Rank, which falls at the bottom of my list of albums reviewed so far. After giving La La Land a couple of listens, I’m glad to see that most of the songs are coherent entities that don’t jump all over the damn place with disjointed melodies and random tempo changes. There are some decent tunes on the album – Instinct Dwelling is a heavy and fairly catchy song, while Queen of Spaces is a nice, quiet one with string-like synth over it. Pollard returns to the old “GBV multi-part song” approach with Slowly on the Wheel. There are a lot of these mini-rock opera-like songs in the GBV repertoire. They’ve been pretty hit-and-miss for me, but Slowly on the Wheel works fairly well. So what’s the verdict? La La Land is a decent album, and though most of the songs are competent, the majority didn’t have any great impact on me. Yes, I’d probably listen to it again, but I can’t say it’s high on my priority list. There’s a fine line between a good song and a great one, and La La Land is an album of good songs.
Suitcase 2: American Superdream Wow 2005; 100 songs, 216 minutes
Dr. M:
I just finished listening to the second 100-song collection of GBV tidbits, Suitcase 2: American Superdream Wow. I told Pollard that he owed me a good beer after listening to the first Suitcase collection. This time I’m asking that he clean out the muck and leaves from the goldfish pond in my backyard. I already fished out the deceased Brown Thrasher from the pond last week, so you won’t have to deal with that.[1] Don’t worry, I’ll provide you with a gardening knee pad, since I know you broke your knee recently.
Suitcase 2 starts out with This Ream, which consists of someone banging on a bass guitar with the sound of steam (?) hissing in the background. I’m hoping that this isn’t a sign of what’s in store. Not sure I can handle four hours of aural floor-sweepings. The good news is that the remainder of the collection is pretty listenable stuff and a fair percentage of the songs sound like finished products, more or less. Like the first Suitcase collection, a number of the tracks are earlier versions of songs that appear elsewhere. Rocket Head, for example, is a weaker version of Teenage FBI from Do the Collapse, while Sacred Space appears in altered form as Office of Hearts on Under the Bushes. Stuff like this would probably be of greatest interest to hardcore GBV fans. At the very least, these tidbits show that Pollard isn’t afraid to go back to the drawing board, tossing out big chunks of songs and keeping only the best portions for other songs.
There are some pre-GBV Pollard songs here going back to the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. Most are pretty decent. Happy At The Drag Strip, which was recorded in 1980, was a good one that caught my ear. There are a fair number of other good songs sprinkled throughout the collection (e.g., Somewhere Sometime, Lonely Town, Tin Can Laughter, Waiting for Your Touch). I’m not sure why many of these weren’t included on albums, as they stand well on their own. There is also a song on Suitcase 2 called Soggy Beavers. It’s an unremarkable 45-second acoustic number. I have nothing else to say about the song – I just wanted to mention that there’s a song on Suitcase 2 called Soggy Beavers.
Suitcase 2 also contains some stuff that would only be of interest to Robert Pollard’s stalker. Golden Pickle, for example, consists of someone playing acoustic guitar with dumb lyrics thrown on top. A guy is laughing in the background. It seems to be one of those “you had to be there” moments captured on tape. Unfortunately I wasn’t there. Sinister Infrared Halo is four minutes of droning lyrics with noise in the background, while Phase IV (Rise of the Ants) and Do the Ball are pointless tunes seemingly made up on the spot.
Like the original Suitcase, all the tracks on Suitcase 2 are attributed to fake bands. Some of my favorites were Yummy Ropes, The Pukes, The Fake Organisms, The Banana Show, and Gene Autry’s Psychic. I’m gonna guess that Pollard has a stash of clever band names ready to pull out of his hat when he starts up another one of his side projects. To sum it all up, Suitcase 2: American Superdream Wow has more quality tunes on it and fewer throwaway tracks than the first Suitcase collection. It’s not something you’d put on with any regularity but it’s not a bad collection overall.
[1] The Brown Thrasher (Toxostoma rufum) is a bird native to the central and eastern United States.
Libs:
Sacred Space is the first thing I recognize as a song, not just that it is a song, but a specific song I know but can’t place. It’s the tenth song by my quick count on the album. Yep, it’s another “Suitcase” full of musical half starts, rough drafts, and unearthed gems from Guided By Voices.
Every band in the 80/90s had a song which uses an answering machine message. I think people just thought that was neat back then. My favorite is Bongwater’s “Great Radio” which begins with a beep and a guy saying, “Is this a record company? If this is a record company, I am a magazine.” GBV takes this to an extreme with XXX. That’s not the name of the song, that’s what I wrote when I was taking notes assuming that tomorrow’s me would be thrilled with homework from yesterday’s me and look it up—but in the spirit of the Suitcase, I am just going to leave it unfinished.
Other half formed ideas while listening to Suitcase 2: “Are you Faster,” is a cover of a song by fellow Daytonites Breeders, which returns the favor of the Breeders covering “Shocker in Gloomtown.” “Jimmy’s Einstein Poster” makes me laugh. “Headache Revolution” demo version is not that much different from the actual one from Boston Spaceships. “Soggy Beavers” is here too.
What are these Suitcase albums? They are endurance tests to be sure, but also a real gift to anyone interested in the process of a genius--and Pollard is most certainly a sloppy genius. We have a romantic idea that a genius sits down and bangs out all the songs on “Human Amusements” in one go, but listen to these false starts and dead ends. You hear a bunch of noise, half hearted efforts, and then suddenly “I’d Chose You” comes on. It’s gorgeous and perfect and almost a relief, and you realize it’s not much different from the five songs on the album that came before, but somehow those don’t work and this one clicks. It’s Pollard’s great lesson for humanity: work on everything because you don’t know—can’t know—what’s genius and what’s just noise. Genius is really just not being afraid to fail. Put that on an inspiration poster in the workroom, pal.
Speaking of homework, I see professor Strezewski has used another freaking footnote in his review. Maybe he’s not aware of how difficult that is to format on Squarespace. (“Squarespace: Make it beautiful, but don’t use footnotes.”) Either way I better get cracking on it. See you next week!
Crystal Nun Cathedral
2022; 12 songs, 38 minutes
Libturd:
I’m depressed. Not clinically, though maybe. I don’t know. I’m supposed to go on an overseas trip and my passport expired and I had plenty of time but I just got en email from the state department saying something is wrong with my renewal application. It says I may have not signed it or are “missing some information.” I definitely signed it. I think. Who knows? Also it’s gray for the nth day in a row and I feel bullied at work. So consider all that your poor affiant is going through when you weigh my humble words of wisdom and judgement about this album.
My methodology with Mike had a major flaw: I put that albums I love up first. I wanted to win Mike over quickly, but the problem is now we have a lot of albums from eras I feel less connected to. Although to be fair, Crystal Nun Cathedral,(the name sounds like the Dead Milkmen’s Doors cover band,) hadn’t been even released when I was pitching Mike the idea on the Completerist GBV project in that dank, noisy basement of a Rockford brew pub where the service sucks and the food has been on a steady decline since it opened. (Prairie Street Brewing Co. invents new ways to disappoint each visit.)
So the album: This is a mixed for me, what Wordle might call a “whew.” Some pretty good songs and some pretty not so good songs. Starts with “Eye City” a song you might bury in the middle of an album and hope no one notices, but for some reason, Pollard leads with it. “Re-Develop” and “Never Mind the List” are both decent tunes. “Birds in the Pipe” has kind of a funny ending, though the rest of it kind of plods along. A funny thing happened when I re-listened to the album. I kept forgetting about it. That’s the secret benefit of being a “rock critic” I think. You can do your criticizing while doing other stuff: cleaning your house or grading research papers or writing something else—you just have to go back and jot a note or two. But with this album, I would regularly forget about the critiquin’ part. I think that’s worse than an album of bad songs, an album of songs that you forget about while you’re listening. You could listen to this album for a whole year and it won’t end up in your wrapped because the algorithm keeps forgetting it exists. “Mad River Man,” breaks through somehow, but even then it has a low energy feel to it. That’s right… That’s what I want to say: Crystal Nun Cathedral is not horrible, just kind of a low energy outing. Not something to lift your mood when you’re already depressed because you apparently forgot to sign your passport application and are about to lose a TON of hard-saved money because of it.
Mike S:
I feel like I’m putting together a GBV puzzle. Slowly but surely, I’m getting a picture of what the band’s all about and how their sound has evolved over the years. At one point, I was pretty sour on post-2012 GBV, as I didn’t have a whole lot of positive experience with their late period albums. I was thinking it might have had something to do with the “Great Maya Apocalypse” that was supposed to happen that year. The Maya, you know, were supposedly a wise, ancient people that knew more about stuff than we know today, so if they said we were all going to get blown up in 2012, I was completely on board with that. Turns out nothing happened, except for my perceived GBV downturn. In retrospect, I’m pretty sure that that “wisdom of the ancients” stuff is a bunch of horseshit, and the Maya were actually just stargazing dumbasses that didn’t even know the earth went around the sun.
In the past weeks, I’ve heard a lot more of the later GBV material and am not feeling as negative as I once was. So how does Crystal Nuns Cathedral stack up? It’s the album right before the “album that shall not be named” (hint – it rhymes with Shemblers and Shmoggles by Shmank) and so I was a bit pessimistic. I gave it a few careful listens so I could be sure I wasn’t biased, and, surprise, surprise, it’s pretty damn good. Crystal Nuns Cathedral starts out strong, with the first four tracks hitting home for me. Climbing a Ramp is especially good. There are a couple of semi-clunkers in the middle (Birds in the Pipe and Forced to Sea) but the remainder of the album is full of strong and (dare I say?) catchy tunes. The album finishes up with Mad River Man and Crystal Nuns Cathedral. Both are great songs. I was pleasantly surprised to see that Pollard still has his chops in 2022, especially given my tepid opinion of the following two albums. Hopefully, the next album (due in the next 10 minutes) will be a return to solid tunes like those of Crystal Nuns Cathedral.
Mag Earwhig!
1997; 21 songs, 46 minutes
Libbers:
Poillard says you can’t hear the revolution on the songs opening track called “Can’t Hear the Revolution,” and then proves it by muttering a bunch of stuff you can’t hear. Mag Earhwhig!’s first great song, “Sad If I Lost It,” is the second song on the album. In fact there is a ton of really great songs on this album, lots to love. The scientist from Bee Thousand’s “I am a scientist”’s woody cousin, “I Am A Tree” is here. Both these songs I was familiar with back from when the only GBV album I knew was Human Amusements. I knew that album really well, (thanks Keith N) but was too intimidated by the reputation of the band to listen to anything else. I thought they were too interesting for the likes of me. The Who and David Bowie were like that as well. When I was in high school, I feared if anyone knew I listened to Bowie they would find me unworthy, a poseur. Actually, I should show you a high school yearbook photo of me--you would be right. But I did listen to GBV, just as I listened to The Who and Pink Floyd and all the band with intimidating reputations. And that’s how I got to this album, eventually.
Mag Earwhig! has a lot of strange directions and misplaced moments, lots of wild energy, not unlike the strange punctuation in the title. “Bulldog Skin” is, I’ll just say it, the greatest first song on any album, a great opening warm-up shit kicker. I felt this when I first heard it on the best of GBV, even though it’s like cut ten, right in the middle of the thing. Listening on CD, “Bulldog Skin” sounds like it’s a re-set: there was what comes before this song, and now we’re about to get to the good stuff. On this album it’s the fifth song. “Are You Faster” has a vibe change scream heralding a new energy in the tune, except at that point, the song ends, right when it should just be getting good. That’s what I mean by strange directional energy. “Not Behind the Fighter Jet” seems to get the mood thing right—it rocks pretty hard, pops pretty good, then fades out with the fighter jet noise as it should. Other favorites on this solid album are “Jane of the Waking Universe” and “Learning to Hunt,” the latter is the song that leads into “Bulldog Skin” on Human Amusements, leading to an even stranger feeling of a wrong turn having been taken in my pitifully mushy brain. Here it leads to “Little Lines,” another great song.
The end of my review. Or is it? mag Earwhig!? Misdirection!
Strez:
Yes, Dan, as per your last review, I figured that you’d front-loaded your favorite albums for the GBV project. If you’re gonna suck some jackass into reviewing the entire GBV discography, you might as well give him the dessert first and hold off on the green beans. It’s not as big a problem for me since I seem to like post-2012 GBV more than you. Plus, I’m a “slow twitch” kind of guy – once I get started on something, I’m in it for the long haul. We still have ten late GBV albums to get through though, so you’d better gird your loins for the task at hand. In fact, let’s both gird our loins.
Mag Earwhig! is the very last mid-era GBV we haven’t looked at yet. It’s sandwiched between two good ones - Under the Bushes Under the Stars and Do the Collapse – so I was perhaps predisposed to like it. I’ve given it a few close listens and it does seem like a bit of a bridge between two eras – the “Alien Lanes lo-fi GBV” and the “polished and going for mass appeal Isolation Drills GBV.”
The album has a good number of top notch tight, poppy sounding rockers that rank among the best GBV tunes I’ve heard yet. These include I Am A Tree, Not Behind the Fighter Jet, and Jane of the Walking Universe. The standout track of the entire album is Bulldog Skin, which has a super-catchy hook and really rocks. It’s one of GBV’s best songs, as far as I’m concerned. Mute Superstar is also fantastic.
A large portion Mag Earwhig!, however, consists of short, mostly acoustic lo-fi tunes that harken back to the Vampire on Titus era. Some are great (e.g., Choking Tara), while others are either plodding, aimless, or uninteresting (e.g., The Old Grunt, Are You Faster, Knock ‘Em Flying, and album’s namesake, Mag Earwhig!). A lot of these songs would fit right in on one of the Suitcase compilations as seemingly half-baked tunes. Most are just OK. I think I might have liked them more if they didn’t contrast so sharply with the more polished tunes.
My overall opinion of Mag Earwhig! is definitely positive – there are some fantastic songs on the album. It does seem, though, that GBV wasn’t sure where they wanted to go at this point. Should we appeal to a wider audience by making our music more accessible or keep doing the lo-fi thing? It seems that the former won out, as their next two albums, Do the Collapse and Isolation Drills, are perhaps the most radio friendly, poppy sounding GBV albums I’ve heard so far. I enjoy both eras, however. You do what you gotta do, Bobby.
How do you Spell Heaven
2017; 15 songs, 37 minutes
Libbers:
Just took my blood pressure, 147/86. I think that’s right. I took it three minutes ago and I already don’t remember because I’m so dumb, but I recorded it on what they call a “spread sheet” and then forgot. I just thought: high. I’m supposed to keep it to under 140 and usually it’s close but under. Right now I got a lot going on: a trip overseas in ten days and still no passport, that’s the main thing. I’m not sleeping well because of that.
How Do You Spell Heaven I also have trouble remembering. Like, I’ve listened to it all the way through probably a dozen times, partially because I like the cover so much. It’s one of my GBV favs artwork wise, and since—are you sitting—Pollard is a dabbles in the visual arts and is a prolific producer of collages and paintings which he sells on his website, and they’re interesting although what do I know, but either way, he does the album covers too, mostly, so he gets credit for this one being pretty neat.
The album it represents however, it just kind of forgettable. I’m looking over my notes and some songs I liked and some I didn’t, but none of them I really remember too well. Paper Cutz was the song I was listening to when I started the previous paragraph. I thought, this is a good song. But now, during Low FLying Perfection, I don’t remember why I thought that. Going back to relisten—sounds like a new song to me.
For what it’s worth, here are my notes: Nothing really standing out. First song is a good one I think. Some of the songs are outright annoying, like Steppenwolf Mausoleum. They seem like missteps, annoying—and not just noisy experiments like GBV of 20 years earlier. Other good songs are Vote For Me Dummy, I Am Columbus, and Some Things are Big (And Some Things Are Small), though I do think the title is a put-on. Boy W grew on me after repeated listens and so did Cretinous Number Ones. Nothing from this album is on my GBV Gems playlist.
But now that I read Mike’s review I realize I do like the instrumental, I just forgot it existed and maybe because I’m always waiting for Pollard to start croaking I just never caught it. But it’s good. So are a bunch of these songs, as near as I can recall.
Strez:
The GBV Facebook page just announced that 45 years ago, Robert Pollard threw a no-hitter at Wright State University. It was a 9-1 game against Indiana Central (now known as IUPUI). I don’t know how Indiana Central scored a run in a no-hitter – maybe Pollard threw some walks and there was an error or two. Who knows? The fact that Pollard was actually a good athlete kind of sums up the weirdness of Guided by Voices. How many other rockers played college sports or were athletic in any way? None. Do you picture Eddie Van Halen, Jello Biafra, or David Crosby playing baseball? No fucking way. These guys were all weirdos and mutants who didn’t know which end of a bat to hold onto. I’m not sure what to make of Pollard’s uncharacteristic athleticism but it kind of fits in when you’re trying to figure out GBV’s place in the rock landscape. After listening to all these damn albums, I’m still not sure. Yeah, it’s definitely rock but I’m stumped if you asked me to be more specific than that.
So…on to the next album. This time we’re listening to How Do You Spell Heaven (no question mark, as far as I can tell). The album is sandwiched between one of GBV’s better post-2012 releases (Space Gun) and one of their worst (August by Cake), so it’s a bit of a toss-up as to whether this one is gonna be any good.
After a few listens, I was temped to write a one-word review, “meh.” The album is OK I suppose but there wasn’t much there to get me interested. There are a few decent tunes (e.g., Diver Dan, The Birthday Democrats, King 007, and Boy W) but each one is missing an elusive something that’d send them over the top.
Unfortunately, a large number of the songs on How Do You Spell Heaven suffer from rambling melodies. Steppenwolf Mausoleum, They Fall Silent, and Tenth Century are prime examples. As far as I can tell, this is post-2012 GBV’s biggest problem - songs that just flop around and don’t go anywhere. How to Murder a Man (In 3 Acts) is especially guilty of this. It zigs and zags all over the place, so you can’t remember where you started and, in the end, you don’t really give a damn anyways.
My favorite song is Pearly Gates Smoke Machine, a rare GBV instrumental. It’s actually happy sounding and contrasts sharply with the mood on rest of the album. I’m guessing it must have been written by one of the non-Pollards featured on August by Cake. (Ok, I just checked on the GBV database, and it was co-written with Doug Gillard, so I’m chalking that up as a win). The fact that the most enjoyable song on How Do You Spell Heaven is the only one not solely written by Pollard says something. Maybe he was tired, had chronic diarrhea, or a tapeworm. All I know is that he got his groove back on the next album, Space Gun, and that’s good enough.
Suitcase 3: Up We Go Now
2009; 100 songs, 3 hours, 34 minutes
Mike S:
Just made it through another 100-song suitcase-load of GBV snippets and song ideas. I’ve been doing a lot of driving these past couple of weeks, which helps when you’re trying to review a collection of songs that’s three-and-a-half hours long. Damn, it’s a helluva lot of work listening to all this stuff.
As with the previous two Suitcase collections, there are some hidden gems amidst the various snippets and cast-offs. Troopers in the Town (misspelled by Spotify as “Troppers”), Watchin’ ‘Em Diggin’ Up The Road, Before My Eyes, and Banners are a few examples. Though good bits can be found here and there on Suitcase 3, they were a lot harder to come by than in the previous two collections. Seems like the well is running a bit dry.
More typical of Suitcase 3 are half-baked or (even) raw song ideas. Amnesia is a whole song, but whoo boy, it’s uncharacteristically bad. Trash Truck is three minutes of someone yelling over a screeching guitar. Not particularly entertaining. Hi, I’m Kelsey is a little kid on the telephone talking about how she just farted. There is some guitar plinking in the background. Dibble is eighteen seconds of lo-fi electronic drum noise. You get the picture…
There are also a few early versions of GBV songs that eventually made it to a proper album. One is an enjoyable acoustic demo version of Class Clown Spots a UFO. That track has the most listens (22k) of any song on the album. Another is a demo of Smothered in Hugs from Bee Thousand. There’s also a good track called Coastal Town that I know was incorporated into something else – I just can’t nail down which song. As in the previous two Suitcase collections, most of the songs are attributed to various fake bands. Some of my favorites include Major Cockamamie, The Stools, Erotic Zip Codes, The Worst Santini, and (the best one yet) Curtis E. Flush.
The Suitcase 3 collection is wrapped up with 25 lo-fi recordings of Pollard playing acoustic guitar. These are entitled “Controlled Acoustic Jams 1994” and were taped between the Bee Thousand and Alien Lanes albums. Most are nothing more than Pollard toying around with various song ideas. On the recording, there are people talking in the background, including a little kid. It sounds as though they’re not paying any attention to him. Most of these songs have 2000 – 3000 listens, max on Spotify. They’re OK, I guess.
Overall, Suitcase 3 has a lot fewer hidden gems on it and a good deal more farting around. It’s pretty much something reserved for Robert Pollard’s future biographer. I might put it on in the background, but even the most ardent GBV fan wouldn’t want to listen to Suitcase 3 with any regularity. He’s got more stuff in his suitcase than Carrot Top, but it seems that even the most prolific and über talented Mr. R. Pollard has his limits.
Libbers:
Speaking of Suitcases, I just got back from Europe and can tell you first hand how disorganized suitcases can become—even for super organized, type A folks, which I am not. Suitcases are filled with shit from home you have to take with you when all you want to do is be someone/somewhere else. You don’t want to be a tourist, trying to figure out why the café macchiato isn’t a milkshake like at Suxbux back home, you want to blend (in the immortal phrasing of Marisa Tomei). So here are my disorganized thoughts looking in the colossal mess of Pollards third suitcase:
“Coastal Town” is some other song, maybe two other songs, neither of which ended up being about Coastal Towns. (See the boys, dreaming, dreaming...) “The Annex” is a strange haunted house song, complete with scary sound effects and Pollard singing in his best Monster Mash voice. “Independent Productions” seems to be Pollard in his house with the mic on, occasionally muttering a line or two of lyrics, humming, and doing something I think is blowing his nose or possibly pushing a chair across the floor, but either way, at some point he recognizes the recorder is running and turns it off. “Sunny the Monster” is a weirdly polished, very non GBV song. It seems to have migrated from some post new wave band’s best of album. It’s tight and clean and weird for existing at all. “Class Clown Spots a UFO” here, but is it the demo or an early version? The eponymous album it appears on is still four years away, so suitcase listeners already heard the song in this early, already pretty fun foot stomper. Songs like “Fly Away (Tommy Sez)” is so clicky it’s really annoying. “One Drop” also has a very familiar progression. Something from earlier? “Smothered in Hugs” is another song that is also a different song elsewhere. Or maybe it’s the same one. “Huffman Prairie Flying Field” is likewise a different song with the same ending as another song or the same song all the way through but memorable at the end. “South Rat Observatory” is talking and strumming but then turns into the opening chords from “Tractor Rape Chain” but then the similarity ends. In “Tractor” he even uses the same acoustic sounding opening that he uses here where he seems to playing in a noise home with kids and other voices. This is the second song I’ve heard where a piece has been removed to make “Tractor,” the other is “Clean it Up” which is included in Suitcase 4 (Spoiler!) “Porpoise Mitted (Was a real good kitten)” is a fun song. The last song on the album, the grammatically problematic, “Alright,” starts with an introduction and ends with Pollard explaining the song to his listeners, “By the way, the tuning for that is…” and then he plays three notes, the melody I assume, and the album ends with that lone sacred feeling look at the process.
It’s Not Them It Couldn’t Be Them It Is Them
2021; 15 songs, 42 minutes
Dan:
The first song starts with a bit of mixture and textural intrigue. I want to say “Spanish vibes,” but what do I know? The horns remind me of the ones in that one other song I really like, (What am I thinking of, Mike? That one The Damned song on their best of double cassette I had in the 90s, I think the song is a cover, but a pretty faithful one…) I think it works this song, and the next tune, “High in the Rain” is as close to a GBV “heart lifter” as we get in this era. I won’t put it on my GBV Gems list, but I considered it. “Dance of the Gurus” is a lot of fun. We get more Pollard a capella. Does this really work, Robert? Whatever it is you’re trying to prove with these a capella songs, you haven’t. “Maintenance man of the Haunted House” is great idea, an evocative title, although the song is kind of depressing and doesn’t really live up to the promise. “Cherubs and the Great Child Actor” is nice little ditty, a sophisticated number with a tension that actually resolves itself. (Although what do I know about tensions or resolution?) “Black and White Eyes in a Prism” fades in and by the time it leaves us we’re in a full throated production mode. It satisfies in a way that “Chain Gang Island” doesn’t, and feels overly produced as well, something you don’t say about a lot of GBV songs. Album ends with “My (Limited) Engagement,” a fun way to wrap up.
It’s Not Them, It Couldn’t Be Them, It Is Them is a fine album. I will listen to it again.
Mike:
Have you ever run a marathon? I haven’t, but I’m guessing it’s a bit like reviewing the entire GBV discography. At some point you think you’re going to collapse in a heap, given the monumentality of the task, but you just have to work up the last bits of energy in your soul to push yourself through it. There will be ups and downs on the journey, and at points you think you won’t make it - but as you approach the finish line, you suddenly lose control of your bowels and diarrhea starts running down your legs. Despite your embarrassment, you feel like you’ve accomplished something in the end. Reviewing GBV is a lot like that.
This time around Dan and I are looking at “It’s Not Them. It Couldn’t Be Them. It Is Them!” from 2021. From now on I’m just calling it “It’s Not Them,” cuz I’m not typing out that whole goddamn album title eight times. The album begins with Spanish Coin, an oddball in the GBV catalog that includes Spanish guitar. It’s a good song that reminds me of a (better) song, Alone Again Or, by Love. Another good one was Maintenance Man of the Haunted House, which is gloomy and creepy sounding, a fact unsurprising, given the song’s title. There are quite a few decent upbeat rockers spread throughout It’s Not Them (e.g., I Share a Rhythm, I Wanna Monkey, and My [Limited] Engagement). None are flat-out classics, but some are worthy of inclusion on a “GBV best-of” playlist. Sure, why not?
The good news is that there are only a few "rambling late-era GBV" songs on It’s Not Them. These exceptions include People Need Holes, which is all over the place, and Chain Gang Island which is just OK. Razor Bug is a short, weird throwaway track with Pollard singing acapella. He sounds drunk.
As a whole, the production on It’s Not Them is thicker than usual for GBV, including some songs with strings and horns. The beefed-up sound works just fine – it’s a nice variation on the usual GBV feel. Many of the songs on the album are dark and introspective. I suppose that’s not surprising, given that the album came out in October 2021 during the COVID crap. Though there aren’t any instantly memorable songs on It’s Not Them, it’s a pretty good effort and I’ll almost certainly revisit the album in the future. It’s definitely a second-tier entry, however.
Self-Inflicted Aerial Nostalgia
1989; 14 songs, 38 minutes
Mike:
Self-Inflicted Aerial Nostalgia is the album immediately after Sandbox, which I pooh-poohed in my earlier review as generic sounding, ear-friendly “alternative” music. Let’s have a look to see if “Self-Inflicted” is a change from this early misstep, shall we?
After giving the album a few listens, it seems to me that GBV has decided to drop the REM wannabee route in favor of pursuing their own path. Glad to see that. The problem is that Self-Inflicted still sounds a helluva lot like 100 Chicago-area bands I’d seen when I was in college in the late ‘80s. Most of these bands put out a couple of so-so EP’s or singles and then disappeared forever. This version of GBV is decent enough but there isn’t much at this early date to make them stand out from other similar bands. If I had seen Self-Inflicted-era GBV in 1989, when this album came out, I’d probably have bought it at the merch table and listened to it a few times before filing it next to the Edseys EP, where it would gather dust.
Production-wise, Self-Inflicted isn’t great. Everything is muffled and tinny, and the echo they put on most of Pollard’s vocals is pretty irritating. It’s not the intentional “lo-fi” aesthetic like they’d later utilize to the nth degree on albums like Vampire on Titus. Self-Inflicted just sounds like crap. The sound is noticeably worse than on their previous album, Sandbox, so I’m not sure what’s going on there.
The songs on Self-Inflicted aren’t bad, but Pollard et al. have a long way to go before they get to the Vampire on Titus or Bee Thousand-level songwriting that’s four or five years down the road. Most of the tunes aren’t particularly memorable or catchy, with the exception of Radio Show, which (oddly enough) doesn’t sound all that much like GBV. Chief Barrel Belly and Liar’s Tale are also pretty decent, so there are a few songs on the album that I might cull for a best-of playlist. So there you have it. I’ll probably give Self-Inflicted a listen once in a while, but it’s mainly a stepping-stone toward a much more exciting version of GBV that’s yet to come. Given that, I think I’ll run down to the basement and give that Edseys EP another listen…
Dano:
This is a great time for all of us to be listening to a new musical album as I am trying to distract myself from promoting a new book what just got released, Book of Grudges, an hilariously jaundiced take on our modern existence, if jaundiced means what I think it does. How can you get a copy? Amazon, or head over to the “besmerchandise” tab above. I refuse to promote album here, so you won’t have to worry about it.
Arial Nostalgia is an early album where the band is starting to sound like Guided by Voices, though in a rather crude fashion. Some of the songs end abruptly and segue without break into the next. The vocals starting to get muddier. There is some early experimenting with sound ands not much of it is all that great.
The Future is In Eggs—what is this David Bowie? The title is Pollard but who is this singing? “The Great Blake Street” is the first song on the album that sounds GBVish to me, brit pop new wave vibes and all that. “Slopes of Big Ugly” feels like people have a lot of time to waste. “Paper Girl” feels at least like a song. “An earful of Wax” is kind of a funny title and the song challenges you to like it with its weird noises, maybe trying to sound like one is listening with an actual earful of wax? “Qualifying Remainder” plods on and if this was all there was to GBV I don’t think much of it would have remained. “Radio Show” is genuine good and on my gems list. so lets leave it there, on a happy note.
Let’s Go Eat the Factory
2012; 21 songs, 41 minutes
Smoky Dan:
Mike picked a good time to flee the country. While he bathes in Slovenian beaches, we in the Midwest are being smoked out by Canadian wild fires. Not too polite, Canada. Eh? I’m noticing a pattern. I love the albums I love more than Mike loves them, and he likes the albums I don’t love more than I like them. I think this is because I came to this ill-conceived project as a super fan of the classic era stuff, (at one point in Spoterfy mmm-mmm’s top .05% of GBV listeners, whatever that means) where as he is listening to it all with an academic’s ear for impartiality and postulatin’ questions.
I half like this album. This album seems to me to be about halves: even the title suggests Pollard had two ideas for titles and just fused them together. Some songs bizarre like “Things That Never Need,” which starts out sounding like a GBV album, the opening opening—what have you—followed by “Donut for the Snowman,” is a nice little number. Kind of slow but appealing. Likewise Spiderfighter, one word. A muted GBV song but I like—look. The Canadians have smoked me out, man. It’s like 240 here right now. I don’t know what that number means but I’ve been checking the air quality meter every hour because my house is sitting in a cloud of Canadian wildfire smoke. Last night we improved from Very Unhealthy all the way down to Unhealthy for a few minutes, now were back in the purple zone of Very Unhealthy. Oh for the days of Dangerous for Sensitive People air. I promise I’ll stop being so sensitive and I can go outside again. My son, the tiny tyrant, is not letting me out, not to jog or ride my bike, and he’s making us keep the windows closed. “Hang Mr. Kite” is not helping me to forget these troubles. Waves is a great song, got that Tobin Sprout sound to it but I’m not looking it up. “My Europa” is nutty. “Old Bones” sounds like it ought to be a Pink Floyd album, not one of the good ones.
I tried to put a few of these songs on my GBV Gems playlist but Spoterfy mmm-mmm told me I had already done it.
MMMMike!:
I just got back from vacation in Slovenia and I’m all rested up and ready to begin another round of GBV reviews. First a plug for Slovenia. It’s a great place – we did a lot of alpine hiking, saw a number of castles and caves, and stayed at some great Airbnb’s. Seems there’s a general lack of knowledge in the U.S. that this county even exists, as most people either thought I was going to Slovakia or kept pronouncing it “Slovania” when I told them of my plans. If you’re looking for a good place to visit that isn’t completely overrun with tourists, go to Slovenia. So there.
While I was on vacation, I listened to Let’s Go Eat The Factory a number of times and am now ready to pronounce judgement upon it. Ahem…Let’s Go Eat the Factory is the first album from the revived original GBV that had broken up in 2004, leaving fans with eight whole years to wait for another release from the band. Pollard was putting out a lot of stuff during that eight-year hiatus, however, so it’s not like fans didn’t have anything Pollard-related to listen to. Here’s where you tell me that “this album isn’t just another Pollard side project, it’s the reunited and beloved ‘Classic GBV Lineup!’” Yes, I know, Mr. Rabid GBV Fan. Get off my ass.
Let’s Go Eat is the first of three albums that GBV put out in 2012, providing us with 21 tunes in only 41 minutes. Good news - the vast majority of the tracks are good, tightly written, and interesting. There are no flat-out classics here, but the album is, overall, a very enjoyable listen, infused with palpable energy and enthusiasm. I got the feeling that there was more attention paid to crafting the songs into a “listening experience” than on most GBV releases and the extra effort pays off. Good production and thoughtful shaping of the sound can make even a mediocre song sound awesome. Many of the songs are quiet, dark, or introspective sounding – even a bit creepy. I like the overall mood of the album.
There are a number of solid rockers on Let’s Eat, including Laundry and Lasers (a great album opener), The Head, Spiderfighter, and God Loves Us. Some good acoustic numbers pop up here and there (e.g., Doughnut for a Snowman and Old Bones, an enjoyable folksy sounding oddball). As you’d expect from any GBV album, there are a couple of weird ones thrown in as well. The Things That Never Need, for example, consists of a couple of people talking over plinking piano. I can appreciate these tunes when they’re used sparingly as a mid-album break. One hundred of them in a row (a la Suitcase), it really starts to grate on you.
The Unsinkable Fats Domino is probably my favorite track from Let’s Eat. Wondering what the hell the title meant, I looked up the lyrics. Here’s a chunk – “Animals sound the trumpets, Wimpy crowns will know, Silence will sink the carpet, Saints will drink and move too slow, They'll be too drunk to know.” I haven’t the slightest idea what any of that means or what the hell it might have to do with Fats Domino. Pretty much a word salad. I suppose I’m not listening to GBV for the lyrics though. To wrap it all up, Let’s Go Eat The Factory is a pretty damn good collection of tunes, one that ranks fairly high on my list.
Same Place the Fly got Smashed
1990; 13 songs, 32 minutes
Doctor M:
Same Place The Fly Got Smashed is GBV’s fourth album. It barely counts as an album, however, as it has only 13 songs and clocks in at 31 minutes. The first tune, Airshow '88, sets the mood – it begins with a clip of a guy fighting with his wife and segues into Pollard yelling over some solo electric guitar chords. Despite my description, the song is actually pretty decent. Airshow ’88 certainly gives us the message that Same Place isn’t going to be the generic “alternative rock” of the previous two albums, Sandbox and Self-Inflicted, both of which were the acoustic equivalent of oatmeal.
Though Same Place isn’t on the same level as most of their later output, the songwriting is much stronger here than on the two previous albums. The production is better too. One other thing I’ve noticed is that Pollard’s voice sounds a lot different on these early albums when compared to everything from Propeller to the present. For the early stuff, he has two singing voices – the first is the “nice Pollard voice,” which is used mostly on the quieter numbers. Pollard’s nice voice sounds a helluva lot like Ed fROMOHIO from fIREHOSE (if you know what I’m talking about). I don’t mind this one at all. The other one, however, is the “screechy Pollard voice” that’s used on rockers like The Hard Way and Mammoth Cave. I can’t say I’m a big fan of screechy voice Pollard, so I’m glad he changed his approach after this album.
As I mentioned above, the songwriting here is consistently better than on the previous two albums. Order For The New Slave Trade and The Hard Way, for example, are both good tunes and typical for the album as a whole. Neither one is a classic but they’re gettin’ there. When She Turns 50 is a nice, quiet song with a Beatles flavor, without being derivative. Blatant Doom Trip is probably my favorite, though it doesn’t have that many listens on Spotify, so apparently most folks don’t share my opinion.
There are only a couple of tracks on Same Place that miss the mark. The most obvious one is Local Mix-Up/Murder Charge, which is a 6 ½ minute multi-part song. This might be GBV’s first attempt at this kind of longer form tune. You gotta admire their attempt at sticking their necks out a bit and trying something a bit more ambitious, but it’s not really all that engaging. The tune just kind of rambles and the bit with someone making a buzzing fly noise is dumb.
I just read Moby Dick last year, so I was in on the “joke” behind the song Ambergris. The lyrics are "what's that you're wearing, it smells so good? You don't wanna know." Ambergris is a waxy substance used in perfumes that comes from the digestive tract of sperm whales. Wikipedia notes that it is “passed like fecal matter.” Yummy. The song isn’t that great.
Same Place The Fly Got Smashed shows GBV right at the cusp of something big. They’ve definitely upped their game when it comes to songwriting and developing a sound that’s not like 1000 other bands. After listening to a shit ton of GBV over the past 10 months, I suppose I’d consider this one the final “early GBV” album. Their next album, Propeller, sounds a lot different from Same Place The Fly Got Smashed, so it seems that something really started to click around this time.
Libster:
There are a bunch of songs I love on this album. “Drinker’s Peace” is one. This song acts as a north star for me, and placing this album in time and space in the Guided by Voices universe. “Pendulum” is a GBV all timer, one of my favorites. Pollard and co were locked in here. “The Hard Way” is also plenty good! Fly got Smashed has a song that name checks Mammoth Cave a lot. I’ve been to Mammoth Cave and I did it with Uncle Mike, the fellow over there on the other side of the page. We haven’t traveled a lot together, Graceland, Mammoth Cave, Dollywood, but all that was on the same trip.
While I am fond of the album and it has a lot of great songs, we’re still not quite in “awesome full album mode.” A lot of these songs don’t quite stick, although I bet when they were recorded, Pollard and boys thought they were great. Makes me wonder if he needed to write through all the weaker material to get to the stronger stuff, and to have the faith that the technique would be there when they needed it to be. Song Ends with a delightful little ditty called “How Loft Am I” that makes the refrain “maybe baby” sound like a single, two syllable word. Would GBV ever be great. Maybe baby, but we’re lucky to know the answer.
Cool Planet
2014; 18 songs, 36 minutes
Doctor M:
I know “kids today” don’t care about track sequencing, as nobody listens to whole albums anymore, but in my experience, most artists will use a sure winner for an album’s opening tune, probably as a means to get the listener engaged. The first song on Cool Planet, Authoritarian Zoo, isn’t that great. Given that, I was a bit worried going into the rest of the album, especially considering that (in my opinion) the post-2012 GBV catalog can be somewhat hit-and-miss.
As I listened to Cool Planet, I got the distinct impression that everyone involved was really tired. Most of the songs, especially those written by Pollard, sound like the band is just going through the motions. After reforming in 2012, GBV popped out three good albums, all in the same year. That’s pretty damn impressive. Beginning with 2013’s English Little League, however, they seem to have hit a rough creative patch. I can understand when something like this happens. I do a fair amount of writing and there are some days or weeks where I’m just pumping crap out just to get it done and, when I look back on it, my lack of enthusiasm shows. I’m not saying that I can read Pollard's mind but a lot of his songs on Cool Planet sound like the sort of stuff you’ll find in abundance on the Suitcase collections, which consist of various cast-offs and half-baked song ideas.
I didn’t find Cool Planet to be completely terrible or unlistenable – it’s just not all that interesting. Pollard has a few decent tunes on the album. Pan Swimmer is one highlight, though the song is only one minute long. Males of Wormwood Mars and Cool Planet are also pretty good. Tobin Sprout has four songs on Cool Planet, all of which are fairly decent. All American Boy, the best of the lot, has a folksy Byrds-like sound, while The Bone Church sounds like a psychedelic Black Sabbath. After listening to the album, I peeked a bit to see what was going on during this time. Seems that Cool Planet is the last album by the reformed classic lineup. The next album, Please Be Honest, is basically a Pollard solo album where he plays all the instruments and the one after that, August by Cake, is the first album by an all-new GBV. Maybe my assessment isn’t too far off?
Libbers:
I just got back from RAGBRAI and boy are my legs tired. I bagged, which as you know means I didn’t put my tent and my smelly bike diapers on a truck like most of you lazy, sensible folks doing the ride, and I sure as shit didn’t stay in hotels like a few people I know but won’t mention here (since you don’t know them and I like them despite this flaw anyway). I did cheat and put my stuff on a conveyance for the last two days, but I did that with nobility and dignity, unlike the other people who were just being lazy.
So in the haze of my recovery, after a week of brutal heat, let’s talk about Cool Planet. I ldig the first track, “Authoritarian Zoo.” It has a march like an army invading a new frontier. “All American Boy” is a compelling song but reminiscent of other songs of its ilk. The vocals are not Pollard and the track sounds like ELO a bit. “You’ve Got Every Game” is haunting, but again not in a way you would want to repeat. “These Dooms” seem depressing. “Table at Fool’s Tooth” is a fun little idyl. Not on my GBV Gems list, maybe too reserved to be a true GBV heart-lifter, but a nice little song anyway. “You Get Every Game” sucks. “The No Doubters” sees Pollards voice rising in that unctuous (meant in the best way) manner which makes one long for classic GBV. “Psychotic Crush” sounds like a kid practicing David Bowie riffs for the first time. Ziggy plays guitar…. over and over. “Ticket to Hide” is a very dramatic song which one barely notices but by the time it’s over has hooked me in.
I like these Tobin Sprout songs, though I couldn’t really connect to his solo albums despite repeated tries, so it’s safe to say Pollard is bringing something to Sprout’s songs too. A little Pollard fairy dust goes a long way!
Welshpool Frillies
2023; 15 songs, 41 minutes
Doctor M:
It’s been a few weeks since I’ve written a review so it’s time to get back to the GBV salt mine. This time around, Dan and I are tackling the latest album, Welshpool Frillies. If you’ve been keeping score, I gave less-than-stellar reviews of the previous two albums, so I wanted to be extra careful with this one, as I didn’t want to let my opinions evolve into a knee-jerk “GBV is played out” rut. I listened to Welshpool Frillies six or so times top to bottom so I could let it soak in.
My initial impression was that the album was kinda meh, but I’ve warmed up to it over the past couple of weeks. I was listening to a Spotify mix and heard a good GBV song that I didn’t recognize, so I immediately checked to see what album it was from. It was Seedling from Welshpool Frillies. Whoops. Guess I have to listen to it again.
So…after a few more listens I believe I’ve made up my mind. About a third of the tunes of Welshpool Frillies are pretty good. Animal Concentrate and Why Won’t You Kiss Me are two examples. Don’t Blow Your Dream Job is also a winner (a bit plodding in spots but…). Seedling is the best song on the album. While there are a few others that hit the mark, there are no unquestionable “Bulldog Skin-level” classics on Welshpool Frillies. That having been said, there are also a few clunkers on the album. Cats on Heat, for example, pretty much exemplifies the rambling melodies and random-chunks-glued-together approach that pops up pretty often on latter-day GBV albums. The song is irritating.
Would I go back to Welshpool Frillies and listen to it again from beginning to end? If I have to be honest with myself - probably not. There are certainly some good songs here, but the album is offset by a fair number of mediocre ones and a few that just don’t work. This is another GBV offering that I’d probably pull the best bits off for a playlist and leave the rest. I know Pollard has probably heard this a million times, but I wish he’d put out one good GBV album a year (a laudable output rate by any standard) instead of three mediocre ones. They’re his songs so he can do whatever he wants with them – and he could give a shit what I think – but I’d argue that “more is better” isn’t always the best approach.
Libbers:
I’ve been feeling bad-sort of-about this project as Mike and I slog through the weeds. T’was my mistake to put my favorite albums up first, his idea to jump eras and not do it all chronologically, my mistake to not have more of a roadmap, a plan, Pollard’s mistake to put all his best stuff in one specific era. But that’s not true—Space Gun and Zeppelins over China are really solid, great albums. I’ve listened to both many times. And Zeppelins is only four years old, although, 12 albums back now. Maybe it's the scope of the project, not our project, Pollard’s, to have an Isaac Asimov level opus. Stephen Dixon is one of my favorite writers and his oeuvre is so large as to not be consumable. Pollard is more popular than Dixon, but that has more to do with their respective milieus: people seem to like pop songs more than they like densely worded novels, not sure why.
Welshpool Frillies (I’m mad at you Robett, or making me type that word so many times) starts strong, I really like “Meet the Star,” but I’m not going to put it on my GBV Gems playlist. I don’t mind listening “Chain Dance” as it sounds like an old GBV song. Maybe it is. “Cruiser’s Cross” resolves in an almost classic GBV vein, a little uplift, a little nod to the old timers. “Romeo Surgeon” also sounds good to me. “Why Wont you Kiss me Back” is a great little ditty, marching along with random thoughts such as Pollard musing about why “…hotels no longer provide writing pens.” It’s a good question, Robert. Here’s maybe why: cell phones. What exactly are you going to use a pen for unless you write three songs a night. Bring your own pens. “Cats on Heat” tells us something is “not coming back,” couldn’t quite catch what. I think I like these songs, all these songs, but I don’t see myself ever playing this album again. Part of that is Pollard’s fault. When I want to hear GBV I’m going to other albums, even this era I will probably go with Zeppelins over China, or more likely albums like “Speak Kindly of your Volunteer Fire Department” which is one of my favorite Pollard albums of all time, but (sorry Mike) not Guided by Voices so we either won’t get to it or it’ll be awhile, depending on how much of a masochist Mike turns out to be. I would rather listen to the very distracting Cash Rivers than the sort of blends-into-the-background tracks on Welshpool Frillies.
Surrender Your Poppy Field
2020; 15 songs, 39 minutes
Doctor M:
Next week, I’m going to see “Black Flag” in Louisville, Kentucky. They’re still around, you might ask? Eh, kinda. It’s basically Greg Ginn and three other no-name guys, so I’m guessing it’s going to be something like “Greg Ginn plays Black Flag’s greatest hits from 45 years ago, accompanied by some other guys you’ve never heard of.” It’s probably the equivalent of seeing Peter Noone trudge out the old Herman’s Hermits tunes, but the crowd is going to be grizzled punk dudes rather than a bunch of old ladies.
To bring it around to GBV, I’m happy to say Pollard hasn’t gone that route. He’s still churning out new stuff year after year. Some of it’s good, some not so much, but dammit, he’s not just milking his old material for nostalgic indie rock fans. The guy is a songwriting juggernaut.
Now on to Surrender Your Poppy Field. This is the first of three albums GBV put out in 2020, keeping up the nutso pace he’s known for this past decade. The album starts out with Year of the Hard Hitter. This song, like a lot of latter-day GBV, jumps around from one section to another, without much of anything to hold them together. This one succeeds to a greater extent than most, however, as most of the chunks that make up the song are pretty good. Even so, there are a few spots where Pollard unnecessarily pulls the plug on the song’s momentum so that he can get on to the next random chunk. I wish he’d stop doing that.
Other than some minor quibbles, the remainder of Surrender Your Poppy Field is pretty good. Volcano is a nice tune in the “quiet/loud” songwriting vein. Ditto with Cul-De-Sac Kids. Arthur Has Business Elsewhere is pretty catchy and has a circus-like organ on it. That doesn’t sound like a plus, but it works. Windjammer is a Who-influenced fast tempo rocker with big power chords and sweeping drum rolls. Man Called Blunder is probably the best song on the album. It definitely deserves a position on a Best of GBV playlist.
The album ends on a few less-than-stellar tunes (Woah Nelly, Andre the Hawk, and Next Sea Level) but these are in the minority. Like a number of GBV’s more recent efforts, Surrender Your Poppy Field doesn’t have any straight up kickass tunes on it, but almost all the songs are good.
Libbers:
I was going to write, “I don’t like this album, I don’t like this GBV era.” I was going to write that I wanted instead to listen to the GBV album that had recently come out with older, unreleased stuff on it, only I couldn’t find. All the titles look familiar. Is it Whatsisface and Googlers by Rank? No, I don’t think. Is it the Guru album? No. I wish someone would write a comprehensive document with all the albums and what they are somewhere on the intry-net.
But it’s a good thing I, as an ethical music critic slash voice of a generation, listened to the album more than once. And in a different mood. The weather turned cold, I have to rewrite a syllabus which means I will very soon HAVE TO GO TO WORK, a birthday coming up, all things that put me into a punkier mood than my usual even-keeledness. And when I listened with sadder ears, I liked a lot of things in this album. Of course Pollard isn’t churning out the power pop ditties of the 90s anymore, he too probably has birthdays once a year and is now at an age where he breaks his knees and creaks a lot in the morning. These songs make a lot of sense to me when I was feeling slightly blue. “Volcano” is a great song and so is “Arthur Has Business Elsewhere,” the latter (note to self: make sure that means the second one otherwise use “former”) song reminded me of a Kinks number, not that it sounds like the Kinks, it doesn’t, but it feels like it’s aged like a Kinks song ages, despite being nary but a few years old.
These songs are mostly solid, mostly engaging, like “Physician” and “Queen Parking Lot.” What’s missing? Maybe the unbridled joy of say, My Valuable Hunting Knife, but Pollard is up to something else. He maturing and so are my expectations about what a GBV albums should be/is. He’s writing music for who he is now for people who are who they are. Now. I think? What will these songs sound like in ten years? I don’t know, but I bet some of them will sound pretty good, and so will some of the 300 others he still has in him.
(BTW, for WIW, I really like the title of this album. I think it’s a sly WWII joke, a commentary on the sort of pathetic peacetime imagery conjured up by war hawks. I can picture Ernst Junger seeing the album cover and cracking up.)
Mirrored Aztec
2020; 18 songs, 40 minutes
Doctor M:
Whew – dodged a bullet yesterday. I mentioned in my last review that I was supposed to see “Black Flag” (i.e., Greg Ginn and some other guys) in Louisville. Well – we didn’t end up going as the guy I was going with had to cancel at the last minute. I looked up recent Black Flag shows on YouTube and, whew, I’m glad I didn’t make the trip. The whole thing was an anemic, lifeless, piece of poo. Greg Ginn was just punchin’ the clock and could obviously give a shit. “Yeah, blah, blah, Rise Above…whatever.” Instead, I watched the Breaking Bad movie with my 16-year-old. Time better spent.
Ugh – that was taxing. Now on to a band that, despite being around for decades, refuses to be a nostalgia act. This time, Dan and I are listening to Mirrored Aztec from 2020, GBV’s second of three albums from 2020. If there’s one thing I’ve come to expect from GBV, it’s that their sound doesn’t change all that much. This approach has its pros and cons. Too much change in a band’s sound can alienate the fans. As much as I hate to use this example, in ten years, Coldplay went from decent spacey-sounding rock to shitty synth-heavy pop that sounds like “inspirational music” from the Olympics broadcast. Weak unlistenable shit. GBV, on the other hand, keeps churning out its signature sound, album after album. If there’s any possible issue with this approach, fans might get tired of hearing the same thing over and over again.
Having said that, I’m glad to see that Pollard et al. stick their neck out a little bit on Mirrored Aztec, adopting a somewhat different sound here than on most of their albums. Mirrored Aztec is, to a large extent, light, energetic, and jerky – a bit like early XTC or the Minutemen. Listen to the intro bit from Math Rock to hear what I’m talking about. The album is also uncharacteristically happy sounding in spots – Thank You Jane is one example. I enjoyed the change from the typical GBV sound which, I’ll have to admit, is getting a bit samey after reviewing 40 albums.
Overall, the songwriting is top notch on Mirrored Aztec. Screaming the Night Away and Bunco Men, for example are nice, melodic tunes, with good hooks that really suck you in. Most of the songs are in the 30k listens area on Spotify, which is a shame, since Mirrored Aztec deserves more attention. It’s certainly better than the latest Coldplay album.
Libbers:
I keep calling this album Aztec Camera. I think that was a band I never listenened to in the 90s. 80s? Mirrored Aztec is one of those Pollard word constructions that sort of sounds like it means something but probably doesn’t, though the words sound nice together. I found this CD in a CD store of all places. This CD store was in Rochester NY, at a beloved nieces’s graduation party. Events in places that aren’t specifically supposed to be places for events events are neat. (I wanted to say “my bete noir” because it sounds like that’s the word I mean, except that bete noir is the exact opppostie of what I’m trying to convey. I love them.)So much so, I’m doing a book release party for my book "Book of Grudges" (Spyuten Dyuvil, Brooklyn NY) at a bike store, Trek Bicycle Rockford in Rockford IL. This was a big record, thrift, junk place with also a bar in it. A good bar too. They know what they’re doing in Rochester, en why. (I’ve already sold enough copies that a bunch of them have been returned, so check the used bookstore sites first, you can get it cheap!)
I typed all that listening to the first two songs of Aztec Cam Mirrored Aztec. I like both songs a lot and I really like this third song, Citizen’s Blitz. This thing has an almost manic, out of countrol energy to it. Pollard’s voice even has a bit of mystery to it, like he’s saying, see what I can still do. To Keep an Area is great!
Eighteen songs and none of them phoned in. Lip Curlers is a typical song on the album, it’s upbeat, catchy, and fun. I’m really enjoying it. Will it hold up to repeated listens? I bet so. This is my favorite album of this era.
Scalping the Guru
2022; 20 songs, 33 minutes
Mr. D:
I had a rediculous writing teacher who used to say in class that Nabakov was like “drinking Perrier after having had nothing but Pepsi.” Or coke or something. She said it a lot, each time like she had just thought of it, a fresh description. She used it later in a blurb for some book, I think an actual re-issued collection of Nabakov stories. It used to make me laugh, and yet, when I heard “Mater Eater Lad,” the first song on this quasi reissue of older tunes from GBV, I had that thought. Ahhh… The shit. This is like sitting alone and throwing back a shot of WT101 after spending a day doing rounds of Malort somewhere in the loop and pretending to like it.
What follows might be unevenish, but maybe that’s partially what defines the classic era of GBV: highs and lows. “My Impression Now” is as good as it gets for GBV: a heart lifter. “Scalding Creek” is a pure Pollard in his amuse-bouche mode. “Mobile’s” refrain of “I’m going mobile” is about as unsubtle a shoutout to The Who as you can get without actually covering the song.
My attention did tend to wander while listening to Scalping the Guru. I can listen fully riveted to Under the Bushes or Alien Lanes or hell even Isolation Drills like I’m reading a mystery novel. But this one I sort of got distracted in the back half. Songs like “Grandfather Westinghouse” and “Johnny Appleseed” just aren’t that strong. You know whose got a good song called “Johnny Appleseed?” Joe Strummer on one of his solo albums. Really! Check it out.
Mike is the researcher in our group and I see across the page yonder he’s got some information on how this is really a compilation album or something. I’m a fiction writer, not an especially noted one, so I have the luxury of not just making stuff up, but also not having to worry about anyone noting what I write. I just published a book where I burned everyone I work with by name and the chair of my department mentioned it as departmental “thing to be proud of” at our opening semester meeting. He hasn’t read it, won’t, and no one will. So they clapped and moved on. Where was I? Oh yes, Guided by Voices. Fine band! I’m a fan. Next?!
Doctor M:
I The GBV online database says that Pollard envisioned Scalping the Guru as a standalone album, consisting of tracks gleaned from four EPs of the 1993-1994 era (i.e., circa Vampire on Titus / Bee Thousand GBV). Three of these (Get Out of My Stations, Clown Prince of the Menthol Trailer, and Fast Japanese Spin Cycle), we’ve already reviewed, so I was already familiar with the majority of the songs on the album. The only EP that I hadn’t heard yet was Static Airplane Jive from 1993. There are a total of 28 songs on the original EPs, so it looks like Pollard dropped eight of the weaker tracks, stuck the remainder together, and called it an album.
While it’s a pretty good collection of songs, I don’t really see a great need for Scalping the Guru as a discrete entity. Yes, all four of these EPs are fairly early in their career and perhaps underappreciated, but they’re hardly “rare” in the Spotify-era. Before online music services became available, we could legitimately talk about difficult-to-find albums that you might only be able to hear on a fourth-generation cassette tape. Nowadays everything’s at the end of our fingertips, so if you’re really digging GBV, you can hear any one of the original EPs in a matter of seconds. Honestly, having everything just handed to you takes a bit of the fun out of it but imagine trying to review the entire GBV catalog in the pre-streaming era. I’d actually have to go out and buy every damn album, including August By Cake. No thanks.
Let’s pretend that I didn’t know that Scalping the Guru was just a “best of” collection from a handful of 30-year-old EPs. Is the album worth repeated listens? The answer is yes. Most of the songs are in the super lo-fi mode that we’d expect from early ‘90s GBV. Some are quiet, some are more in the rock vein, but the whole collection holds together pretty well. One minor beef though – the drumming is utterly shitty on a couple of the tracks (e.g., Matter Eater Lad and Hunter Complex). There’s no drumming credit for these tracks on the GBV database so I’m guessing that Pollard or some other non-drummer is playing. Hey, I’m ok with lo-fi sound, but when somebody can’t keep a goddamned beat, it makes me want to take the drumsticks away from them and throw them out the window.
Please Be Honest
2016; 15 songs, 33 minutes
DLibs:
“Zodiac Companion” is a pretty dreary start, but “Kid on a Ladder” brings things closer to heading in the right direction. Next comes “Come on Mr Christian,” an inoffensive but sadly forgettable number. “The Grasshopper Eaters” is like a joke on the listeners. Is there some kind of genius to the monotony of this number? I just did the Wordle and was distracted and missed the next couple of songs but got “order” and started listening to “Caterpillar Workforce,” which is at least three songs in one, all them good, but maybe shouldn’t have been strung together like one of those human centipedes my grandchildren are always asking me to get them for Christmas. Then “Sad Baby Eyes” starts up and I think Pollard sat down at the pianer and just banged this out. Is it good? No. No it is not.
It was at the halfway point I read Mike’s review and then my opinion started changing. Maybe I had missed some of what was great. I listened to it again. Now I like it more. But it was because of Mike’s positive assessment. Look, I’m a GBV superfan, Spotify even says so. But because there is so much material it’s okay to admit not all of it is my “cup of tea,” as they say in Spain. Because I’ve been slow to post these reviews (Because of promoting my book—Mike just published one too! You should check it out. Not out of the library but buy it and check it out that way. I bought mu copy here. Now where was I, Oh yes: Because I’ve been slow to post these reviews) I had already been listening to our next one, which, spoiler, I really like a lot. One of the songs even appears on my 186 song GBV Gems playlist, but you’ll have to tune in to find out which one.
Doctor M:
Please Be Honest is a Pollard solo album with the GBV name tacked onto it. He plays all the instruments and wrote all the material, with nary a Sprout or March within 100 miles. The album is essentially a bridge between two GBV eras and lies smack dab in the middle of a rough patch in the GBV catalog, as far as I’m concerned. In 2012-2014 the classic GBV lineup reunited and put out six albums in just a few years. While starting out strong, the last three albums of this version of GBV were fairly aimless affairs, culminating with 2014’s Cool Planet, a tepid collection of songs where everybody seems to be just punching the clock. Given the worn out feeling of Cool Planet, it’s not surprising that this lineup kicked the bucket at this point. Moving ahead, in 2017, the year after Please Be Honest, Pollard unveiled an all-new GBV lineup – one that’s persisted to the present day. While this iteration of GBV has produced some good releases, the first couple of albums are patchy and generally uninspired. So yeah, Please Be Honest lies right in the middle of a five-album drought, which verges on my least favorite chunk of their catalog.
Given the lackluster bookends on either side of Please Be Honest, I was expecting the album to be lousy and really wasn’t looking forward to listening to it. I was completely wrong, however. Please Be Honest is filled with well-written and fairly catchy songs, many of which are just Pollard singing, accompanied by one or more guitars. Live, human-played drums are kept to a minimum, likely because Pollard’s drumming skills are obviously minimal. The resulting album is, perhaps by necessity, fairly quiet. The overall mood is somewhat introspective and gloomy as well. I don’t want to psychoanalyze the guy but maybe the tone of Please Be Honest is a reflection of GBV’s uncertain future in Pollard’s eyes. Who knows?
The best tunes on Please Be Honest include the title song, an infectious medium tempo rocker. My Zodiac Companion, the opener, is a memorable tune in the quiet/loud vein, while I Think a Telescope is a great acoustic number. I could keep going, but you get the picture. Listen for yourself. Please Be Honest is a good listen and, like Mirrored Aztec, is better than Coldplay’s latest album.
Warp and Woof
2019; 24 songs, 37 minutes
Dan:
I kind of dig the vibe of the first song, “Bury the Mouse.” Sounds like the old man’s reaching for something and even uses old album titles as part of the lyrics—or at least one of them. (Where the Fly got Smashed.) The next two songs, “Angelic Weirdness” and “Foreign Deputies” are rough going, and I can’t imagine going out of my way to listen to them again. “Dead Liqour Store” puts us back on solid ground.
And so goes Warp and Woof, the penultimate full album of my and Mike Strezewski’s Guided by Voices project for The Completerist dot com. The pattern repeats. A catchy song followed by a couple of real slogs. “It Will Never be Simple” is a nice little song and “My Angel” is actually ON my GBV Gems playlist, it’s one of the best 185 GBV songs in my opinion. But then “Skull Arrow” and “Out of the Blue Race” is not so good.
Look Warp and Woof, Mike and I aren’t mad at you, we’re just disappointed. But we’re Completerists. And We’re two away from Completing. Anyway, I’m reading a book about the Harmony Society right now, (that’s right Mike, I’m actually reading it instead of Gondolin. Quiz me.) so I’ll wrap this up because Mike is already at least one album ahead of me. That’s the real story here: how I had listened to all the albums before he even started, but through the focused application by of rigorous academic standards, he’s beaten me to the finish line. Brains beats beauty again!
Doctor M:
I don’t know what to do with Warp and Woof. I’ve given the album about five complete listens and am still having trouble deciding whether I like it or not. There are certainly some good songs on the album. Cohesive Scoops, My Angel, Cool Jewels and Aprons, and End It with Light are the four best tracks. None are flat out classics but hey, they’re all worthy candidates for a GBV best-of list. Thumbs up there…
The problem is with the remaining 20 tracks. A large percentage of these are just OK. Most have a bit here and there that I like and then there another chunk that’s just not good at all. A lot of these tunes have flabby, rambling melodies that shoot off in random directions. My Dog Surprise is a good example. Listen to it. There’s usually a spark of something interesting in these tracks but each misses the mark in one way or another. I get the feeling that a little extra tweaking could have made these songs a whole lot better.
About two-thirds through Warp and Woof, we’re presented with a pleasant Smiths-like jangly instrumental, entitled It Will Never Be Simple. No songwriting credit is given on the GBV database but It Will Never Be Simple doesn’t sound like a Pollard number as it’s a bit too sweet for his repertoire. After that, Warp and Woof pretty much falls apart. The final seven songs on the album (with the exception of the closer, End It with Light) didn’t work for me at all. Out of the Blue Race is uncharacteristically bad. Maybe Pollard intentionally crammed all the weakest tracks toward the end, hoping we weren’t listening too closely at this point, and then topped off the collection with a winner at the very end so we’d forget that the last third of the album wasn’t all that hot.
After some additional thought, I’m gonna go on the record in saying that Warp and Woof is scraping the bottom of the middle tier for me. There are some decent tracks there, but given the insane number of GBV albums, most of which sat with me a whole lot better, I probably won’t revisit this one all too often.
Earth Man Blues
2021; 15 songs, 37 minutes
MStrez:
Earth Man Blues lies in stark contrast to 2019’s Warp and Woof, the album I reviewed last week. When listening to Warp and Woof, I couldn’t help but get the feeling that the whole thing was hurried out the door, as though Pollard knocked out some songs over a couple of weeks and then said, “OK, let’s record ‘em and make it the next album. Here you go, folks! On to the next one!” Though I’m not a songwriter, I’ve done enough writing in my time to know that any creative product needs tweaking, reworking, and hard decisions to get it to a presentable state. First drafts nearly always suck.
Thankfully, Earth Man Blues sounds like Pollard took the time to slow down his frenetic output enough to mold each song, so it doesn’t sound like he’s making up the melodies on the spot. Each of the songs is tightly crafted and damn enjoyable. No turds here. Most tunes are fairly straightforward rock with the full band. Lights out in Memphis (Egypt), Child’s Play, and Margaret Middle School are a few of the album’s highlights. The band is tight, and the guitar riffs are particularly good. Hats off to Doug Gillard. It seems like more time was spent on the production too – a bit of strings, synth, and bongos (yes, bongos…) are thrown in here and there to give the album some variety. What else can I say? Earth Man Blues is one of the best albums from the 2017-to-present incarnation of the band.
Again, I’m glad to see that latter-day GBV can be pretty damn good. There are certain artists that have a seemingly endless supply of juice, while others only have a few good albums in them before they flame out (I’m talkin’ to you, Weezer). Pollard’s talent seems to sputter here and there but he can still produce quality product 40 years down the road and that’s commendable. Sir, I raise my glass of Diet Mountain Dew to you! Huzzah!
DLibs:
“Made Man” is a relief. A terrific song which I immediately entered as song #187 of my GBV Gems plauslist. I did this before the break where it switches into sounding like an XTC song but I still like it. A few songs later “Trust Them Now” comes on and I feel the same level of gratitude. This is our last GBV regular album, for now, and Pollard can still surprise and delight and inspire. When he wants to.
On “The Disconnected Citizen,” Pollard adopts a funny voice to mock… what exactly? Out moments of being awarsh in information and that feeling of being hopelessly overwhelmed. We haven’t spent much time here at TheCompleterist.com talking about Pollard’s lyrics, and maybe that’s fine. They are pretty inscrutable as far as lyrics go. Probably not going to get a Nobel anytime soon.
But what these songs show is strength as a hooky pop music arbiter. Earth Man Blues is actually a fairly jaunty outing for Pollard, more upbeat and hookier than the albums with which it appeared contemporaneously. “Free Agents” and some of “Lights out in Memphis” are fun to listen to. “Test pilot” sounds like The Who. “Sunshine Girl Hello” finds our boy Bobby in about as silly a mood as he gets. Reminds me of some of the stuff he recorded as The Takeover or Moping Swans.
Suitcase Four: Captain Kangaroo Won the War
2016; 100 songs, 3 hours, 30 minutes
Dan Libman:
This just has a sound I love—second song, “Walls and Windows” is another version of Hardcore UFOs from Bee Thousand, except that it doesn’t have the muffled interface the album version has—leave it to GBV to release an outtake version of a song that is better, cleaner than the actual album version. “I’m in Shock (Hit me with the Tonic) is just a great great toe tapper. And it’s the third song—97 more to go. “Deaf Dumb and Blind Girl,” is about as unsubtle a The Who reference as one can get, is just “Try Me On For Size” is Echoes Myron stripped down and awesome. Ninety-four more to go.
Of course there is plenty of garbage here too. Why the very next song, “No One Looking for You,” sucks, for example. Song six and it blows hard. Ninety-four to go! Song seven, “Murphy had a Birthday” is awesome. I am feeling such love and enthusiasm for this Suitcase, but I can’t keep this up for 100 songs--hey, I'm no Robert Pollard! Is it going to be this whiplashy for ninety more songs? So here are more scattered thoughts:
“Hey You Know Me” reminds me of Blondie if Blondie just shouted at each other random things like, “I read a book, it was a good book.” ”Clean it up” is another version of “Tractor Rape Chain,” or a prototype version of sorts. Listened to twice all the way through.
“No Bird” is silly but fun, Pollard’s response to “Bird is the Word,” maybe.
You go to bed. You wake up and listen to the next song. You can’t count anymore, it’s “Then Again” with it’s possibly ironic refrain, “…again and again and again,” to describe the GBV listening experience. “Then Son of the Sea,” a song so raw you can hear Pollard turning on and off the recorder several times. Some songs I listen to a bit then skip through, such as “Pinpoints on the Anal Zone,” which is about as pleasant a song as the title might suggest. There are a lot of flat out clunkers on here—just Pollard daring us to listen to something so half-formed.
But even toward the end of this thing it can still surprise and delight. “Third Grade Aviator” is great. Toward the end, “Just One Drop” is a catchy AF, with it’s chorus, a throwback to some song on Under the Bushes, I can’t think of which one but it sounds very familiar to me.
This is Pollards fourth Suitcase album and this may be a minority opinion here at The Completerist, but I wish there were four more Suitcases for us to unpack, that’s right, 400 more of these numbers: good, bad, and catchy. Captain Kangaroo Won the War wins the day!
Mike Strezewski:
Suitcase Four, as you may have guessed, is another compilation of Pollard bits and pieces, cast-offs, half-baked ideas, and early versions of songs later appearing on albums. Like the other Suitcase collections, this one is also 100 songs in length and clocks in at a patience-testing 3 ½ hours.
It seems that Pollard is really scraping the bottom of the barrel this time around. If you thought the previous Suitcase collection didn’t have a whole lot on it that would appeal to all but the most fanatical GBV fans, you’ll be surprised to see that Suitcase Four pushes that boundary even further. About 10 percent of the tunes are halfway decent or have a small kernel of something listenable there. Few are actual completed songs. Most appear to be recordings of Pollard trying out ideas. Without any context, it’s kinda hard to say.
The most interesting elements of Suitcase Four are the early versions of various better-known songs. Try Me On For Size is an early version of Echos Myron. A stripped-down rendition of Motor Away is also included. Pollard sounds drunk on that one. There’s also an acoustic Tractor Rape Chain entitled Clean It Up. Hearing that one gave a bit of insight into the origins of the song and made me appreciate the final version. There were also a few respectable songs that I didn’t recognize. Slow Dirty Water is a decent acoustic number. Lockets of the Press is a pretty good jangly tune. It sounds like a really early GBV recording, so I guess we can look beyond the fact that it’s basically an REM clone. Beyond these (and a few others) there ain’t a whole lot on the collection that’s gonna get your juices flowing. Most of Suitcase Four seems to be putzing around and nothing more.
Below are some of the notes I jotted down on various tunes. I think these kind of sum up what you’re in for if you choose to undertake the “Suitcase Four challenge”:
• No One Looking for You – wailing over chords. Electric buzzing noise (hair clippers?) in the background. Or extreme tape hiss?
• No Bird – rambling nonsense
• Porpoise Northeast – random chords and melodies. Sounds like a song idea fishing expedition. Fish weren't biting on that day.
• One Big Boss – banging on piano. Something an eight-year-old might do. Testing our patience.
• Our Little Secret – song is so lo-fi you can barely hear it. Might have been recorded on an Edison cylinder machine.
• Skin High – banging on the piano and yelling.
• You Don't Know Me (I'm Your Dog) – Sounds like the first band you were in when you were 15 and irritating your parents in the basement. Unlistenable non-song.
• Frog Baby Axe Murderer – Halfway through, the song speeds up and plays at triple speed through the end. Testing to see if anyone is still listening.
• When 2 Hours Seem Like 5 – appropriate tune for Suitcase Four.
I suppose there’s somebody out there that can appreciate Suitcase Four – I guess it’s obvious from my comments, however, that I’m not that person. The fact that Pollard hasn’t released a Suitcase collection since 2015 is perhaps a sign that even he realized that the well was completely dry, and this planet did not need yet another 100-song compilation of crumbs from the bottom of the GBV toaster.
Tonics and Twisted Chasers
1996; 24 songs, 37 minutes
Mike:
This album was originally released in 1996 and was apparently something that was only made available to members of the GBV fan club. Unfortunately, I was too busy with my Toni Braxton fan club membership at that time, so I missed out on picking this one up. Tonics and Twisted Chasers was pressed in ten different vinyl colors with 100 albums in each color. According to the GBV database, the colors included yellow/gold; of these, some “are darker and almost look brown,” in case you were wondering. The first version of the album had 19 tracks on it but (in true GBV fashion) this was beefed up to 24 songs for subsequent rereleases. I don’t have the energy to try to figure out which songs were added for the rerelease, and I don’t think it matters either way.
Tonics and Twisted Chasers is a fairly quiet, mellow collection of Suitcase-like lo-fi songs and song snippets, with none of the tracks over 2 ½ minutes. Some are fully formed tunes that were seemingly given some thought, while others are little blurbs of song ideas. As Tonics is a fan club album, there aren’t any class-A GBV songs included (why waste great tunes on 1000 listeners?); however, it doesn’t mean that the album is just a bunch of throwaway crap. There are actually a number of decent songs included. The best track is Dayton, Ohio/19 Something & 5, a mellow, nostalgic tune, with references (presumably) to the Dayton of Pollard’s youth. Top Chick Silver Chord also connected with me – great tune. Other good ones include The Stir-Crazy Pornographer, Long as the Block is Black, and The Candyland Riots.
That being said, there are also a few half-baked song blurbs that didn’t add a whole lot to the collection. Wingtip Repair is one minute of frenetic piano whacking with “singing” over it, while My Thoughts Are a Gas (Fucked up Version) is correctly advertised, as it is indeed “fucked up.” As I’ve said before, these tunes are OK in small doses. If you’re subjected to 100 of them in a row, it’s a whole other matter. Despite these occasional bits of half-assery, Tonics and Twisted Chasers is a decent collection that’s good listening for when you’re in a laid-back mood.
Dan:
The filthy hippies on the cover of Sunfish Holy Breakfast EP are back, and they’ve brought with them some tunes. (Seriously, check out the art on both albums. It’s the same hippies.) Sometimes when I am reading a book that I am enjoying, I’ll find myself slowing down deliberately, taking more time on each page the closer I get to the end. That’s what happened here with GBV project. Ask Mike. I was woefully behind in posting the EPs—and this would be the end if Pollard hadn’t just released another album, the final one in 2023, although there are still six weeks left on the year, I wouldn’t rule it out.
Tonics and Twisted Chasers starts in all lo-fi glory, a twangy guitar, Pollard wildly singing that he’s in love with a girl named “Satellite.” I think. She’s cute and some day he’ll maybe strike a hotter match, and then he says he’s in love with a girl named Edison. Then a non-live version of “Dayton, Ohio 19 Something & 5.” Pollard asks, “Isn’t great to exist?” This sentimentality seems to be as far as Pollard will take it. “158 Years of Beautiful Sex” starts with synth drum. It’s truncated and strange, but I guess when you’re going to pack 24 songs into 36 minutes, the constraints become part of the fun?
Some of these songs are great (“Knock ‘Em Flying,” “Dayton Ohio,” “Key Losers”) but some are just straight up awful. I don’t mind songs that are not so inspiring, but why make ugly noise such as “My Thoughts are a Gas.” What is this, a Circus Devils album? “Wingtip Repair” the rare GBV keyboard song, also ain't so good, though it sets up “At the Farms,” a winner. “Optional Bases Opposed” is a nice little number. “Universal Nude Finger” has a vocalist I don’t recognize—maybe it’s Pollard. He accentuates like Pollard but it’s too high, so maybe electronically altered. Maybe it’s not Pollard singing, maybe it’s some acolyte anxi0usly being influenced. Anyway, another keyboard song, and this one seems like it’s from some sort of failed musical. “Girl from the Sun” a fuller, more rewarding song to listen to, it the last good song on the album and almost the last song on the album. But not the last album of this year or this project.
Dan:
Happy Spoterfy (hmm-mmm) Wrapped season. I got some weird numbers this year. First of all GBV, for the fourth year in a row was my top band, and I was in the .01 of their listeners for the second year in a row. If GBV was Taylor Swift, they’d be offering me a T-shirt for 60 bucks as a way of saying thanks or have a special video that only I and my fellow decimal co-habitues could see. But Robert Pollard is not Taylor Swift and so I got dick for my literal hours of listening—other than the pleasure I got reveling to some of his universal truths and cycles in songs such as, say, “Universal Truths and Cycles.”
But lo, something did happen what’s a bit queer: for the first time in years, no single GBV tune cracked my top five songs. Because I am “hypnotist,” Spoterfy mmm-hmmm’s (I say it like Sling Blade) inexplicably inappropriate way of labeling a person who listens to albums entire, (shouldn’t we be labeled “hypnotized”), all my five songs are by Big Thief, a group my grand and great grandchildren introduced me to, and for whom I had a late year major swoon. Listen to “Cattails” sometime when you’ve had a whiskey or two and are bummed about kidney failure and so how you fare. This also has to do with my important role as GBV-arbiter. I’ve been swimming pretty much in the entire oeuvre this year. The beneficiary being you the reader.
But though it won’t show up on next year’s wrapped on account of this being the time out-of-time when Spoterfy (mm— you get it), doesn’t track or more likely doesn’t report back what it tracks, (probably because even DJ X doesn’t want to hear Christmas shit more than it has to) GBV won’t get credit even though I’ve had “Nowhere to go but Up” on repeat.
Not because I have to but because I love it. It’s up there with “Space Gun” and “Zeppelin over China” in terms of winter-era Pollard brilliance. “The Race is on, the King is Dead” has a title that suggests Pollard in his bifurcated music mode, but what follows is a gorgeous crue du couer for hanging in there. “Puncher’s Parade” and “Local Master Airplane,” keeps the theme alive. Pollard sings about “feel[ing] shitty” and having to take “happy pills,” but he still can say “I take pride in all my accomplishments.” Fuck yeah, Robert!
This thing is loaded with great tunes. “Stabbing at Fractions” could be any period GBV. “For the Home” shows that Pollard can still tap into something fresh, can still bring out a turne that surprises and, yes I’ll say it: delights. Looking forward to album 40, due out in Feb sometime. I’m assuming.
Nowhere To Go But Up
2023, 11 songs, 39 mins
Mike:
As we round out 2023, GBV has released its third album this year, Nowhere To Go But Up. I was a bit worried about this one as I wasn’t a big fan of the last three GBV releases, Tremblers and Goggles by Rank, La La Land, and Welshpool Frillies. All three seemed to plod along, woefully devoid of hooks or memorable moments. Of course the knee-jerk GBV über-fans lauded each one as a triumph equivalent to Napoleon at Austerlitz. Was I the only one who thought these albums were boring and aimless? Was I missing something?
I am glad to report that Nowhere To Go But Up is a good album, as now I can get on board with the rest of the GBV community. Whew, it’s great to be back in the fold. It seems like Pollard has gotten his songwriting shit together on Nowhere To Go But Up, as a large percentage of the songs are solid efforts. The lead track, The Race Is On, The King Is Dead, upbeat and catchy, and the album, for the most part, keeps up the momentum throughout. Cruel for Rats, For the Home, and Stabbing at Fractions are a few other respectable tracks, proving that thirty-nine albums in, Pollard can still bring his songwriting chops to bear. One thing that always amazes me is that he doesn’t repeat himself, even after writing 10,000 songs. There’s no “Pollard formula” that he keeps milking over and over and that’s remarkable.
There were only a couple of songs on the album that didn’t work for me. Love Set, for example, is one of those multi-part tunes that Pollard seems to be fond of these days. It consists of a bunch of bits cemented together into a Who-like mini “rock opera.” I’m really not a fan of these, as all they do is flop around from one section to another every 30 seconds without anything to hold the song together. The tune features the lyrics, “hippo belly rabbi, hippo belly priest,” which I think is some kind of comment on religion. Jack of Legs is another one of these multi-part tunes. It’s not all that fantastic either.
There aren’t any A-list GBV tunes on Nowhere To Go But Up but that’s OK. The album is a collection of competent, coherent songs, and that’s what I’m here for. You can keep the dozens of tracks of Pollard dicking around (e.g., most of the Suitcase stuff) and multi-part attempts at a more progressive rock sound. Gimme a solid, well-written tune that goes from point A to point B, lo-fi or not, and I’m on board.
Mike:
Pollard is keeping up the insane songwriting pace he’s known for, and has gifted us the first GBV album of 2024, Strut of Kings. I’ve always been skeptical of anyone’s ability to judge an album based on just a few listens, so I put Strut of Kings on heavy rotation for about a week and let my opinions simmer before committing them to paper. So what’s the verdict? Well, I suppose Strut of Kings is solidly middle of the road for me. There’s a lot to enjoy on the album but I don’t know if it’s one I’m going to listen to over and over.
The album starts out with one of Pollard’s ambitious multi-part numbers, “Show Me the Castle.” It’s a big, grand sounding song but dammit, I just can’t get into these five-part “mini rock opera” tunes that latter-day Pollard seems fond of. I guess I just prefer more structure in my rock music. Ok, so the first song didn’t push a lot of buttons. What about the rest? The good news is that there are a fair number of strong tunes on the album. “Dear Onion” is a damn good mid-tempo rocker. “Fictional Environment Dream” is another catchy one. I woke up the other day humming this tune in my head, so I suppose that’s a positive. I’m reminded of REM every time I hear it. “Serene King,” a tight rocker, is another great one. It’s the clear standout track of the album.
That having been said, there are a couple of duds as well. One is “Olympus Cock in Radiana.” Man, I don’t even wanna know what that title is supposed to mean. The title aside, “Olympus Cock” is plodding and rambling. That one couldn’t be over with quick enough. “Bicycle Garden” kinda jumps around, defying all expectations of where it’s going. In some contexts this can be a good thing (who wants predictable songwriting?) but in this case, it just sounds like the song was made up 15 minutes before recording it. “Flabby melodies” like these are one of my biggest issues with latter-day GBV.
I don’t want this review to sound negative, however. Most of the songs on Strut of Kings are good to middling and damn, the band plays with a helluva punch. I just don’t think that it’s going to be one I’m going to run to when I have a GBV itch that needs scratching. I’ll just leave it at that…
Strut of Kings
2024, 11 songs, 35 mins
Dan:
This is the only scheduled release from Himself this year I have been told by Mike and did not fact check. Mike teaches at a kolledge so good enough! There’s a couple of good songs on the first quarter of this album. I’m not saying that’s all there is in terms of good songs, but I want to highlight that. “Show me the Castle” is a thematically nice vibe for an album which references kings right there in the ol’ title. The song itself has a kind of stately majesty to it: mid level, late GBV from a wintering genius. It picks up halfway through as Pollard songs often do and becomes something else, something more upbeat and hopeful. At this point I’m so familiar with “the sounds of Robert Pollard,” the moods, that I only need to hear the opening strumming of “This Will Go On” and the throaty, basement warbling vocals to know this is going to be one of the earnest ones. It’s not terrible, but will I ever go out of my way to hear it again? Fortunately this is followed by “Fictional Environment Dream” which is Pollard in heart-lifting banger mode. We are four songs in but this one is great. “Olympus Cock in Radiana” isn’t just a throw-away title line as Pollard sometimes does, but seems to be part of the lyric scheme. I like the song but I don’t think Pollard is going to pick up any new listeners with it—I guess that’s not the point of it anymore. “Caveman Running Naked” and “Leaving Umbrella” plod along and the latter tune kind of just got on my nerves after awhile. Another visit from one of the strutting kings comes toward the end of the album. This king is named “Serene” apparently. The song is called “Serene King” and I assumed that would mean the king himself would be calm, but apparently no, that’s his name according the lyrics. (I like when my students spend most of their response statements to stories we read telling me what they thought the story was going to be about based on the title. I’m teaching this summer and one student wrote she thought the story “Venus Cupid Folly and Time” would be about Greek myths and she was so thrown to find it a southern gothic story about manners she never could find her footing. Slightly off subject, another student called Lt Cross in O’Brien’s The Things They Carried “an incel,” and wrote that he needed to learn a thing or two about “consent” before fantasizing about girls back home. I worry inordinately about today’s young people. Most are fine but the wackos are really out there.) “Serene King” is a great song, and I guess after four or five listens the only other song from the back half of the album that grabbed me was “Bit of a Crunch.” I don’t think you’ll like it or that most people will, but it’s so stripped down, so raw, I just feel like the old man is really hitting it on this one. I can’t defend it, but I was really moved by this tune. Not a great album but a couple of great songs. Mike and I are going to see the Guided By Voices in Indianapolis next week. I hope he doesn’t play too much from this album. By the way, definitely unrelated, to this album anyway, Spoterfy mm-mm has some Pollard playlists, playlists Pollard has made, and he seems to really love the Roches. I do too, but I never imagined that was in our Venn diagram of bands. The Kinks, yes, The Who, yes, Yes, no. But the Roches? Yes!
Epilogue: Completerist concert review!
Guided By Voices:
Outdoors at Hi-Fi Annex
Fountain Square, Indianapolis
July 19 2024
Robert Pollard, Mike Strezewski, Dan Libman
Dan:
The linchpin to my convincing doctor Mike S to listening and reviewing 40+ albums of GBV was my promise of a ticket for him the next time they came to town. And true to my word, I got us tickets to one of the four shows GBV booked in Evanston New Year’s week 2022, except Pollard broke his knee and had to cancel his shows. I believed he really broke his knee, but in case I didn’t, the Facebook post announcing the cancelled shows came with an ex-ray of a knee which I suppose was broken and I suppose was his. Because I am teacher, (as was Pollard himself before rockstardom) I always believe my students when they make an excuse accompanied by a funeral program or a doctor’s note.
But Mike and I did get to see a show finally in Indianapolis, a town with the advantage of being halfway between us, but not much else going for it. Honestly the block where the club was located was lively and fun but the hotel was packed with racecar fans and they seem silly in their colorful, peacock jackets and shiny boots.
The concert was about perfect. I hadn’t had dinner because I didn’t know about the time change and Mike had eaten earlier with his son whom he brought with but made stay back in the hotel. I was worried about mild hunger nagging at me, but the venue had food and I got a beer and a vegan burrito because they were out of burgers. The crowd was not as elderly as I thought or as male. I stood near a group of young women who knew the songs, and not just the old ones like a lot of the guys. At one point a fan seemed to have a stroke in front of us, but once they cleared him out we took his spot and had a better view, though Mike said we were probably standing in the guy’s urine.
The moon was full and rose up behind the buildings as the show progressed. Pollard drank from a tequila bottle and had one beer after another. He made us usual jokes about how if you’re going to write 4,000 songs, “…some of them are going to be pretty good.” I find a lot of wisdom in that. I left the venue with my ears ringing (Mike wore earplugs and though I had some too, it wasn’t that loud during the first song and I never thought about them again, forgetting that a night’s worth of noise is accumulative, and that we were moving closer and closer to the stage thanks to heart attacks and small bladders. (Hey Bobby, “Heart Attacks and Small Bladders” would be a good name for one of your final albums.)
They played 2.5 hours and I got to see one more concert with my high school college chum Mike, with whom I saw The Cure, and The Kinks, The Smiths, the B52s when they were still cool, and a plethora of forgettable Ska bands. And the next morning we had pancakes at the Bob Evans (it was a real Bob heavy weekend) paid for by Mike which was thrilling as he is a notorious cheapskate. He ate half of his and brought the rest to his son, still asleep in the hotel room. He seemed pleased to get them!
Mike:
I finally made the pilgrimage to see GBV. Dan and I met up in Indianapolis, which is more-or-less halfway between my house and Dan’s. We missed the opening act and got there just in time to see GBV. Dan had forgotten that Indy is on Eastern time (and I forgot to remind him - whoops). After the required anal cavity search at the door, my first inclination was to buy some merch. Nearly two years of reviewing all GBV’s output and not contributing any meaningful money to the GBV cause, I felt I owed it to Pollard to pony up for a $30 t-shirt. Maybe this could make up for some of the stuff I said about how irritating it was to listen to hundreds of half-baked song ideas on the Suitcase collections. Anyways, it made me feel a bit better about myself, and that’s good enough. During one of my less favorite tunes, I shot over to the porta-potties to try on my shirt, trying hard to make sure I didn’t touch my brand-new shirt to the plastic pee-soaked urinal.
So how was the show? Pollard and Co. were tight and played the crap outta their set, covering both the old stuff and the new. After 40 years, GBV still isn’t a nostalgia act and dammit, that counts for a helluva lot. Imagine you’re in Molly Hatchet, playing at the Kane County Fair and trying to act enthusiastic playing “Flirtin’ With Disaster” for the 4,000,000th time. That’s gotta be depressing as shit. The one thing that really impressed me was Pollard’s appreciative attitude toward the fans that showed up, which he repeated a number of times. In between two songs, he confessed that “rock and roll saved my life.” Where he might have wound up if the GBV project hadn’t panned out? Who knows, but he certainly gave the impression that he was grateful to be where he was. I can’t blame him. Too many people are working at jobs they can’t stand, likely a major contributor to the dickhead attitude that’s en vogue in the US these days. Pollard may not be a household name, but he seemed content with his well-deserved place as a minor deity in the rock pantheon.
