January 20 street date. Little introduction should be required here. Let it suffice to say that Bee Thousand is arguably the best, or at least among the top Guided By Voices albums in a copious discography. Accordingly, the album has stacked up accolades over the years, including being voted #1 on Amazon.com’s "100 Greatest Indie Rock Albums of All Time." It’s a staple of such lists, and has also placed highly on those curated by Spin, Pitchfork, Mojo and Rolling Stone. This new LP pressing, the first since the late ’90s, honors the album’s 20th anniversary. It features new (and definitely improved) mastering from John Golden, a substantial gatefold jacket with a previously unpublished Robert Pollard collage, and high-quality virgin vinyl from RTI. We’ve also included a free download card.
Please Note: New street date is January 27. Little introduction should be required here. Let it suffice to say that Bee Thousand is arguably the best, or at least among the top Guided By Voices albums in a copious discography. Accordingly, the album has stacked up accolades over the years, including being voted #1 on Amazon.com’s "100 Greatest Indie Rock Albums of All Time." It’s a staple of such lists, and has also placed highly on those curated by Spin, Pitchfork, Mojo and Rolling Stone. This new LP pressing, the first since the late ’90s, honors the album’s 20th anniversary. It features new (and definitely improved) mastering from John Golden, a substantial gatefold jacket with a previously unpublished Robert Pollard collage, and high-quality virgin vinyl from RTI. We’ve also included a free download card.
March 19 street date. "Propeller" was the fifth album by Guided By Voices, and was intended to be the group's last. Released as a limited edition of 500 LPs in 1992, the album featured handmade covers and blank labels to keep expenses as low as possible. Their other albums hadn’t sold much, why would this one? As fate would have it, the band wound up releasing an album chock full of gems Pollard had stockpiled, and for the first time sounded distinctly like the band that fans have since come to love. "Propeller" also marks the return of Tobin Sprout to the GBV fold, along with an increased songwriting presence. "Propeller" is a hell of a ride, and remains one of the most important albums in the band's discography. The vinyl edition has been out of print for a decade, and features different cover art than previous pressings. The CD edition has been out of print for a minute as well, and is now housed in digipak format, also with a new, unique cover from one of the original pressings. And for the first time, "Propeller" is available on cassette.
March 19 street date. "Propeller" was the fifth album by Guided By Voices, and was intended to be the group's last. Released as a limited edition of 500 LPs in 1992, the album featured handmade covers and blank labels to keep expenses as low as possible. Their other albums hadn’t sold much, why would this one? As fate would have it, the band wound up releasing an album chock full of gems Pollard had stockpiled, and for the first time sounded distinctly like the band that fans have since come to love. "Propeller" also marks the return of Tobin Sprout to the GBV fold, along with an increased songwriting presence. "Propeller" is a hell of a ride, and remains one of the most important albums in the band's discography. The vinyl edition has been out of print for a decade, and features different cover art than previous pressings. The CD edition has been out of print for a minute as well, and is now housed in digipak format, also with a new, unique cover from one of the original pressings. And for the first time, "Propeller" is available on cassette.
August 9 street date. Matador classic re-issued at new low base price! The 8th, and most popular, album from America’s finest exponents of rock’n’roll songwriting and from-the-heartland-warmth, Alien Lanes features 28 songs. We like to call it GBV’s "White album". This extended excavation of childhood, memory, and the niceties of human contact tosses away the jaggedier edges of their early work for a slide show of the more distorted margins of pop / rock. Includes MP3 download coupon.
Jan. 17 street date. After a 15 year hiatus, the "classic lineup" of GUIDED BY VOICES (Robert Pollard, Tobin Sprout, Mitch Mitchell, Greg Demos and Kevin Fennell) finishes off its year-long reunion tour by releasing an album of 21 new songs, deliberately choosing to return to what bandleader Pollard calls the "semi-collegial" approach of iconic GBV albums like 'Bee Thousand' and 'Alien Lanes'. 'Let’s Go Eat The Factory' is much more than a mere return, however: sprawling, variegated, heavy, melodic, and yet still recognizably and coherently Guided By Voices in both its literal and mythic senses. Eschewing the recording studio, 'Let’s Go Eat The Factory' was instead manufactured in the living rooms, basements and garages of various longtime band members. Band members occasionally switched instruments, and Pollard gladly accepted input from other band members. Sprout wrote or co-wrote and sings on six of the 21 songs. The aesthetic is very much GBV, but in some unexpected ways (more prevalent use of keyboards and samples, for one thing) the 21st century can't help but poke its nose into the resulting music.
March 27 street date. "Keep It In Motion" is a propulsive, drum-machine driven pop song which features, unusually, acoustic guitars, strings, and Robert Pollard and Tobin Sprout singing together in a way not heard since "14 Cheerleader Coldfront" on 1992's 'Propeller'. Possibly. Bob recorded and sent to Toby at his home studio in Michigan for over-dubbing. The B-Sides consist of "Pink Wings", a lo-fi snippet on which Pollard speak-sings scary lyrics about wings full of blood over a bed of Beatle-esque harmonies, not entirely unlike 'Alien Lanes'' "Chicken Blows", and "White World", an actual Beatle-esque pop song with horns (or at least horn samples) and a Pixies-like bass intro.
Available now. "Jon The Croc" is one of the heavier songs on the forthcoming 'Class Clown Sees A UFO'. We don't know who the Jon referenced in the title is, but we wouldn't want to be him. Features a wonderfully melodic dual-guitar solo towards the end. The B-Side is a classic Tobin Sprout song, with Toby playing all the instruments himself, and it's as catchy as hell, although we're not sure why hell is catchy, but people do say that. Would not have been out of place on the album itself, but you can't have everything. Apparently.
May 8 street date. "Class Clown Spots A UFO" is the title track from the forthcoming new album by Guided By Voices (already!). Ridiculously catchy, melodically-complex, shot-through-with-melancholia, the song serves as a kind of sadder and wiser riposte to XTC's "Making Plans For Nigel" as performed by the Hollies. If that makes any sense at all (it will when you hear it, hopefully). Also includes the tracks "Message From The Moon" and "Worm With 7 (Home-Fi) Broken Hearts".
June 12 street date. The new GUIDED BY VOICES album is the best thing the band has recorded since the last album by the legendary Dayton, Ohio, rockers. That's not meant facetiously: the last thing Guided By Voices did was the rapturously received 'Let's Go Eat The Factory', and 'Class Clown Spots A UFO' ups the ante raised by that stellar effort, both in terms of recording fidelity (boring!) and songcraft (not boring!) One could argue there's more depth and variety here than on 'Alien Lanes', that there are better songs here than on 'Bee Thousand', but that's an argument no one's ever going to win, at least definitively. And this album is a win, by any definition. The sequencing of 'Class Clown' hearkens back to their landmark LP 'Alien Lanes'; songs bleed into each other, fade-outs segue into fade-ins, and short bursts of melodic rock jut against somber chamber pop. And we might as well tell you the band is about to finish their third record since reuniting, because you'll find out sooner or later. 'Bears For Lunch' is due in late November. But for now, enjoy the best thing since the last thing and until the next thing after that.
November 13 street date. This is the reunited Guided By Voices’ third album of 2012, in case you had lost count. Many bands struggle to release three albums in their career, never mind three in one year. Let’s Go Eat the Factory and Class Clown Spots a UFO garnered four-star reviews and amens from the the faithful. From the opening track, "King Arthur the Red," with its full-throated riffery, slam-tastic drums and even some show-offy lead guitar shredding, it’s evident that GBV Mach II may just now be hitting its stride. Download code included with vinyl.
November 20 street date. A live album originally released in 1996, performing material mostly from the classic GBV albums 'Alien Lanes', 'Propeller', 'Bee Thousand', and 'Under the Bushes Under the Stars'.
January 22 street date. 6 song EP, Limited to 1500 7-inches and 2000 CDs worldwide. Welcome to the commencement of 2013’s Guided By Voices recorded output. Please take your seats quickly. For those who slept through 2012, the Dayton, OH, rock legends released three hugely-acclaimed albums last year and toured throughout the United States of America, including Florida. Bandleader Robert Pollard also put out two solo albums, a couple issues of his collage-heavy zine Eat, as well as a 'Best Of' record by his other old band Boston Spaceships, and conquered the moon, probably. Down by the Racetrack is Guided By Voices stretching out in a way not seen since early- to mid-’90s EPs like Get Out My Stations or Clown Prince of the Menthol Trailer. It’s a particular kind of lo-fi weirdness, from the spooky background 'aahs' on 'Pictures of the Man' to the drunk piano bashing on 'Standing in a Puddle of Flesh'. The mix of wild, tossed-off vocals, raw guitar chug and skewed 'Eleanor Rigby' / 'See Emily Play' sweetness could only have originated from the Midwest-warped minds of Dayton’s canniest rock warlocks.
January 22 street date. 6 song EP, Limited to 1500 7-inches and 2000 CDs worldwide. Welcome to the commencement of 2013’s Guided By Voices recorded output. Please take your seats quickly. For those who slept through 2012, the Dayton, OH, rock legends released three hugely-acclaimed albums last year and toured throughout the United States of America, including Florida. Bandleader Robert Pollard also put out two solo albums, a couple issues of his collage-heavy zine Eat, as well as a 'Best Of' record by his other old band Boston Spaceships, and conquered the moon, probably. Down by the Racetrack is Guided By Voices stretching out in a way not seen since early- to mid-’90s EPs like Get Out My Stations or Clown Prince of the Menthol Trailer. It’s a particular kind of lo-fi weirdness, from the spooky background 'aahs' on 'Pictures of the Man' to the drunk piano bashing on 'Standing in a Puddle of Flesh'. The mix of wild, tossed-off vocals, raw guitar chug and skewed 'Eleanor Rigby' / 'See Emily Play' sweetness could only have originated from the Midwest-warped minds of Dayton’s canniest rock warlocks.
April 9 street date. Limited to 1000 copies. The fifth single from English Little League, 'Noble Insect' continues the noble tradition of Pollard writing a song over a Sprout instrumental (see, for example, 'Hot Freaks'). In this case, the result is practically Japanese. The flip features jaunty Sprout piano-based shard 'Waves of Gray' and a similarly piano-based, though Lennon-raw, Pollard snippet called 'See You Soon'. We have every reason to believe he means it.
April 30 street date. English Little League-the fourth album from the reunited "classic" Guided By Voices lineup of Robert Pollard, Tobin Sprout, Greg Demos, Mitch Mitchell and Kevin Fennell-hums like angry birds along the full spectrum of rock’s highways and byways (especially the byways), from rock to roll and back again. Pollard’s rebus system of songwriting (sounds made visible, abstract concepts symbolized) strung like fairy lights from the opening song "Xeno Pariah" to the galvanic closer “With Glass in Foot,” kettles along at full steam throughout, punctuated by the airier constructs of Sprout ("The Sudden Death of Epstein’s Ways," with its sweet / creepy emphatic refrain of "Jesus," is a particular standout). The Guided By Voices project, as any fan knows, both requires and rewards effortful listening, and lazybones who dismiss the volume of Pollard’s output as (basically) impossible misunderstand the care with which he assembles his dreamscapes.
April 30 street date. English Little League-the fourth album from the reunited "classic" Guided By Voices lineup of Robert Pollard, Tobin Sprout, Greg Demos, Mitch Mitchell and Kevin Fennell-hums like angry birds along the full spectrum of rock’s highways and byways (especially the byways), from rock to roll and back again. Pollard’s rebus system of songwriting (sounds made visible, abstract concepts symbolized) strung like fairy lights from the opening song "Xeno Pariah" to the galvanic closer “With Glass in Foot,” kettles along at full steam throughout, punctuated by the airier constructs of Sprout ("The Sudden Death of Epstein’s Ways," with its sweet / creepy emphatic refrain of "Jesus," is a particular standout). The Guided By Voices project, as any fan knows, both requires and rewards effortful listening, and lazybones who dismiss the volume of Pollard’s output as (basically) impossible misunderstand the care with which he assembles his dreamscapes.
February 18 street date. Motivational Jumpsuit is the latest, bestest release by reunited indie rock (whatever that means) juggernaut (means an unstoppable force) Guided By Voices. It speaks in several silvery tongues, and like last year’s English Little League takes many routes to the same shimmery, elusive destination: rock greatness. Its 20 songs (in 38 minutes!) range from the shaggy, Who Sell Out pop-pourri of 'Evangeline Dandelion' to the lurching, rifferific 'Planet Score', breezing briskly through every worthwhile rock ’n’ roll style sheet along the way. Robert Pollard and co.’s influences are by now so thoroughly assimilated that Guided By voices referents are mostly to other Guided By Voices songs / eras: 'Save the Company' calls to mind the band’s Bee Thousand / Alien Lanes lo-fi glory daze, while 'Vote for Me Dummy' could be from Isolation Drills. For instance. Recent intramural turmoil aside (Guided By Voices has a long history of members quitting / getting fired / posting private correspondence online / waking up in the gutter), the band has never sounded more cohesive. Tobin Sprout’s insanely catchy feather-light confection 'Record Level Love' bobs up against the deeply purple spray-paint rock of 'I Am Columbus', which pinballs into the elastic, sprightly 'Difficult Outburst and Breakthrough'.. the pacing and variety always seem to make some kind of higher sense, if only as an appeal to the senses. Motivational Jumpsuit is gangly, wordy, heavy, lovely, catchy, rocky, complexly simple, and better than almost any record you’ll hear this year. This is the fifth record (in three years) by New Era GBV, and there will be more. Listeners may be forgiven a certain degree of bewilderment at the sound feast spread before them, but rest assured, this is the result of hard labor by a restlessly inventive musical mastermind. You can dig in anywhere you like, but you will always come back for more. Like a star to every wandering bark, Guided By Voices is as constant as love. You can’t say better than that.
January 28 street date. Five brand new 7-inches featuring tracks from the upcoming Motivational Jumpsuit full-length to be released February 18, 2014. Each is limited to 1,000 copies worldwide and includes a digital download.
January 28 street date. Five brand new 7-inches featuring tracks from the upcoming Motivational Jumpsuit full-length to be released February 18, 2014. Each is limited to 1,000 copies worldwide and includes a digital download.
January 28 street date. Five brand new 7-inches featuring tracks from the upcoming Motivational Jumpsuit full-length to be released February 18, 2014. Each is limited to 1,000 copies worldwide and includes a digital download.
January 28 street date. Five brand new 7-inches featuring tracks from the upcoming Motivational Jumpsuit full-length to be released February 18, 2014. Each is limited to 1,000 copies worldwide and includes a digital download.
January 28 street date. Five brand new 7-inches featuring tracks from the upcoming Motivational Jumpsuit full-length to be released February 18, 2014. Each is limited to 1,000 copies worldwide and includes a digital download.
May 13 street date. Conceived during the sub-freezing Polar Vortex of 2014, the next Guided By Voices record is Cool Planet. It’s another wineskin full of great songs, recorded in a single proper studio for the first time since their inexhaustible reformation. There’s some unusually consistent and consistently awesome production on display, thanks to the array of vintage equipment on offer at Cyberteknics Creative Studios in Dayton, Ohio. Cool Planet also offers a weighty crunch that will lay you flat, perhaps due in part to the (re-)addition of late-version Guided By Voices tubthumper Kevin March on drums. Robert Pollard has talked in recent months about having refined his approach to songwriting (as if that was a thing that needed to happen) and the tunes he’s written for Cool Planet stack up against the best he’s ever done, including the hard-hitting title track, which just begs to be played live. Guitarist Tobin Sprout steps up with (among others) a Bowie-esque song ('Psychotic Crush') and a Beatle-esque number ('All American Boy'). Look what Guided By Voices have done for the world since reforming in 2010. Six high-quality full-length albums in less than four years. And that’s not counting EPs, singles, tours, or solo records. If the sorry state of the present day indie-, alt- or just plain rock landscape is the disease, Guided By Voices is the cure! Do not take in moderation.
Please Note: new street date January 27.As a companion piece to the vinyl reissue of Bee Thousand, Scat Records presents a new edition of this finest compilation of Guided By Voices outtakes. Originally included with the multi-disc set Box, this issue marks the album’s first release as a standalone piece. The first side features highlights from two otherwise unreleased albums from the band’s early days (Learning to Hunt and Back to Saturn X), while the second side mops up the best cuts left off of Bee Thousand. All tracks are exclusive to this release. Packaged in a high-quality, heavy-duty tip-on jacket and pressed on virgin RTI vinyl (Incl. Download), this LP is a must for even the casual GBV fan.
April 22 street date. Robert Pollard wrote and recorded and played all the instruments on Please Be Honest, and when he finished, it felt to him like a Guided By Voices record. He’s not wrong. The songs are compact and tuneful, the playing expertly slack, the production raw and unpolished: sounds pretty much like every review of Bee Thousand. A better cognate, however, might be Vampire on Titus, Pollard’s 1993 pre-Bee Thousand (somewhat overlooked) lo-fi tour de force. On that record, Pollard similarly played every instrument—though his drumming skills then were so rudimentary that he had to record the bass drum and the snare parts separately, which is no longer the case—and as with everything he does, it’s about the songs, man. Of which Please Be Honest has no shortage, fifteen of them clocking in at just over 33 minutes. The point being there’s precedent for a GBV record where Pollard plays everything, and maybe more importantly there’s a reason for that precedent. Robert Pollard is Guided By Voices. This has never not been true, certainly, and is now more true than ever. He delights in confounding expectations, and you have to at least suspect that after over 20 years of making records under any number of pseudonyms, of which Guided By Voices is just one, and maybe not even his favorite one, he chafes at the notion that there exists some Platonic ideal of “Guided By Voices” that isn’t just Bob writing and recording the songs with whatever musicians he wants to use. Guided By Voices’ new live line-up reflects not just a possibly subconscious desire to prove that unalterable fact, but fits with Pollard’s unchanging changeability. He does what he wants. He is who he is.
September 9 street date. In November 1995 Guided By Voices handed in their darkest and most obscure record to that point. The 60-odd songs the band had recorded in 24-track studios had all been scrapped. Chief Robert Pollard was adamant about releasing a home-taped album "as is, no compromises, man."; citing his dissatisfaction with the hi-fi material. Then Bob changed his mind and went into another 24-track studio and banged out the majority of the songs on Under The Bushes Under The Stars in two days. The results were Guided By Voices’ clearest and most ecstatic album to date. A fabulous introductory record for new fans confused by the amount of Guided By Voices catalog in the racks, Under The Bushes also contained new songs that triggered synapses in their devoted core audience.
April 7 street date. Guided By Voices’ August By Cake is the one hundredth studio album that Robert Pollard has released since 1986’s Forever Since Breakfast. To put that in perspective, Bob Dylan has released roughly thirty nine studio albums since 1959. And that includes the Traveling Wilburys. This is a highly anticipated record, which includes the new line-up (returning GBV veterans Doug Gillard and Kevin March, virgins Bobby Bare Jr and Mark Shue) that has been wowing audience in clubs and festivals throughout 2016. It’s the most musically adept and versatile line-up Pollard has ever assembled. With thirty two songs, this album is also GBV’s first ever doublealbum, and song contributions from all five band members is additional icing on the cake, setting album #100 apart from the previous ninetynine. The double album is an important format in Pollard’s own musical iconography, and he doesn’t take the form lightly — one reason he’s planned and abandoned several would-be GBV double albums in the past is his high regard for foundational works like Quadrophenia, the White Album, The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway, Daydream Nation, Zen Arcade, Double Nickels On the Dime — “defining records for these bands,” says Pollard. It’s important to him that August By Cake not just be a double album but that it be a great one.
August 11 street date. Latest album follows up critically acclaimed August By Cake with same killer line-up! Guided By Voices is on a roll. One could argue that GBV is never not on a roll, that Robert Pollard’s output plows past the word “prolific” like prolific is standing still in a snowbank; and that’s true, but this new version of the band (Doug Gillard, Bobby Bare Jr, Mark Shue, Kevin March) has given Pollard new tools to complement his song-hammer. Thus, ergo, quod erat demonstrandum: roll. Hot on the heels of the smothered-in-plaudits double album August By Cake comes this hot and heavy fifteen-tune long player, a melody-dense thwack to the earholes that will both energize and deplete your body of its remaining music-appreciation enzymes. Recorded by the band in New York, and by Pollard in Ohio, How Do You Spell Heaven capitalizes on the current incarnation’s tour-buffed shine without sacrificing eternal verities such as but not limited to: off-kilter rhythmic jolts; krazy chords; purposefully imperfect harmonies; and fragmented structures that start and stop on a coin of small denomination and go somewhere else, and quickly. There’s more, much more—the easiest, laziest way to sum up this latest album is the most obvious: How do you spell heaven? Shout it from the rafters: G-B-V!
August 11 street date. Latest album follows up critically acclaimed August By Cake with same killer line-up! Guided By Voices is on a roll. One could argue that GBV is never not on a roll, that Robert Pollard’s output plows past the word “prolific” like prolific is standing still in a snowbank; and that’s true, but this new version of the band (Doug Gillard, Bobby Bare Jr, Mark Shue, Kevin March) has given Pollard new tools to complement his song-hammer. Thus, ergo, quod erat demonstrandum: roll. Hot on the heels of the smothered-in-plaudits double album August By Cake comes this hot and heavy fifteen-tune long player, a melody-dense thwack to the earholes that will both energize and deplete your body of its remaining music-appreciation enzymes. Recorded by the band in New York, and by Pollard in Ohio, How Do You Spell Heaven capitalizes on the current incarnation’s tour-buffed shine without sacrificing eternal verities such as but not limited to: off-kilter rhythmic jolts; krazy chords; purposefully imperfect harmonies; and fragmented structures that start and stop on a coin of small denomination and go somewhere else, and quickly. There’s more, much more—the easiest, laziest way to sum up this latest album is the most obvious: How do you spell heaven? Shout it from the rafters: G-B-V!
March 23 street date. In 2018, Guided By Voices will release precisely one new album, Space Gun. Once you hear it, you will know why. With a renowned work ethic and a daily pot of coffee, Robert Pollard continues to outclass younger generations of come-and-go rock bands. After 20+ years, 100+ albums, 2000+ songs, Pollard still can’t really explain (or doesn’t want to explain) his secret: “The songs just come to me.” In 2017, the new GBV line-up (veterans Doug Gillard and Kevin March and newcomers Mark Shue and Bobby Bare Jr) blew audiences away and toured behind the ambitious and sprawling multi-vocalist double album August By Cake, followed just months later by the concise punchy and catchy How Do You Spell Heaven. Pollard has acknowledged that this line-up’s adroit talents pushes him to more daring and dizzying heights. The band will be touring throughout 2018. And now, here it comes: Space Gun, the fullest realization yet of Pollard’s song talents, with the band firing on all cylinders. There’s humor and whimsical childlike musings, cinematic grace and elegance, heavy duty propulsion, dark futuristic undercurrents, twists and turns and kinetic magic. Robert Pollard is a lyrical master; not a word out of place, every line bristling with surprise, telling a story that’s both irresistible and impossible. Invention and imagination remain the undiminished life-forces of a Guided By Voices record and this one absolutely crackles with this energy: this band is on fire.
December 14 street date. After 2018’s critically acclaimed Space Gun LP and a string of jaw-dropping, sold-out shows, GUIDED BY VOICES has announced a sprawling double-album, Zeppelin Over China. to be released on February 1. But before this one has even made it to the warehouse, Robert Pollard has written and recorded another full-length in record-breaking time. It’s Warp and Woof (April 2019), exuberantly barreling through 24 songs in just 37 minutes with a brevity similar to mid-90s GBV albums Alien Lanes and Vampire On Titus. GBV kicked this one out in a flash, recorded in studios, club soundchecks, hotel rooms and even in the tour van. And because you can never have too much GBV, the album is being teased on four vinyl-only (1000 copies) limited edition 7-inch EPs: Winecork Stonehenge and 100 Dougs will be released in November. Umlaut Over The Özone and 1901 Acid Rock in March.
December 14 street date. After 2018’s critically acclaimed Space Gun LP and a string of jaw-dropping, sold-out shows, GUIDED BY VOICES has announced a sprawling double-album, Zeppelin Over China. to be released on February 1. But before this one has even made it to the warehouse, Robert Pollard has written and recorded another full-length in record-breaking time. It’s Warp and Woof (April 2019), exuberantly barreling through 24 songs in just 37 minutes with a brevity similar to mid-90s GBV albums Alien Lanes and Vampire On Titus. GBV kicked this one out in a flash, recorded in studios, club soundchecks, hotel rooms and even in the tour van. And because you can never have too much GBV, the album is being teased on four vinyl-only (1000 copies) limited edition 7-inch EPs: Winecork Stonehenge and 100 Dougs will be released in November. Umlaut Over The Özone and 1901 Acid Rock in March.
February 2 street date. Zeppelin Over China is a major and majestic work in the GBV canon, spotlighting the scope and genius of Robert Pollard’s songwriting. With thirty-two songs in 75 minutes, the massive double-album Zeppelin reaches lofty heights on its musical journey. Pollard continues to deliver endless invention and emotional wallop in two and three-minute guitar rock gems. Pollard has assembled his greatest supporting cast ever—Doug Gillard (guitar), Kevin March (drums), Mark Shue (bass), Bobby Bare Jr. (guitar) and Travis Harrison (engineer)—and this line-up’s virtuosic talents spur him to his most ambitious work yet, a grand album of emotional resonance and narrative drama. After well-deserved acclaim for the mind-boggling milestone of Pollard’s 100 career albums, Zeppelin Over China is a wonderful entry point for new listeners to experience Guided By Voices for the first time. Not resting on his laurels, Pollard’s tireless tenacity pays off with spectacular results.
February 1 street date. Zeppelin Over China is a major and majestic work in the GBV canon, spotlighting the scope and genius of Robert Pollard’s songwriting. With thirty-two songs in 75 minutes, the massive double-album Zeppelin reaches lofty heights on its musical journey. Pollard continues to deliver endless invention and emotional wallop in two and three-minute guitar rock gems. Pollard has assembled his greatest supporting cast ever—Doug Gillard (guitar), Kevin March (drums), Mark Shue (bass), Bobby Bare Jr. (guitar) and Travis Harrison (engineer)—and this line-up’s virtuosic talents spur him to his most ambitious work yet, a grand album of emotional resonance and narrative drama. After well-deserved acclaim for the mind-boggling milestone of Pollard’s 100 career albums, Zeppelin Over China is a wonderful entry point for new listeners to experience Guided By Voices for the first time. Not resting on his laurels, Pollard’s tireless tenacity pays off with spectacular results.
April 26 street date. Following Guided By Voice’s sprawling double-album Zeppelin Over China, Robert Pollard has written and recorded another full-length in record-breaking time. It’s Warp And Woof, exuberantly barreling through twenty-four songs in just thirty-seven minutes with a brevity similar to mid-90s GBV albums Alien Lanes and Vampire On Titus. GBV kicked this one out in a flash, recorded in studios, club soundchecks, hotel rooms and even in the tour van. After completing Zeppelin, Pollard felt the itch to record a few EPs. Just as GBV had done back in 1994, he would use them to channel his everflowing ideas to an outlet. But when a magical boombox writing session produced six fully formed songs in under half an hour, Pollard realized he had an album on his hands. What to do? With a band so formidable they’ve been dubbed the Golden Age of GBV, they completed much of the recording on the road. The 2018 Space Gun Tour provided impromptu recording venues. Pollard recorded vocals in hotel rooms, complimentary condominiums, and small studios. Doug Gillard cut guitar tracks for “End It With Light” through his Mesa Boogie rig at the soundcheck at the Ottobar in Baltimore. Bobby Bare Jr. recorded his spacey main rhythm guitars for album closer, “Time Remains in Central Position” at the same show, but in the backstage green room. Kevin March added drum tracks in a studio in his hometown Montclair, New Jersey. Gillard played guitar on “Bury the Mouse” in a van hurtling at 60-plus m.p.h., and Mark Shue laid bass on “Angelic Weirdness” as he balanced on the speeding van’s bench seat…. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i90ybISTMLw
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