Once
upon a time, Guided By Voices frontman Bob Pollard and his rotating band
of merry pranksters wrote and recorded mind-blowing albums comprised of
timeless, fragmented, lo-fi pop ditties. Though long removed from the  band’s
dual masterpieces of the mid 90s, “Bee Thousand” and “Alien Lanes,” which
in turn raised the bar high for all future releases to be measured by,
the song for GBV still remains the same: to surpass those collective efforts
with each new record they release. The slick production of the band’s TVT
output—1999s “Do the Collapse” and 2001s “Isolation Drills”—proved to be
a quick and sudden detour for fans accustomed to the snaps, crackles and
pops of earlier efforts. Pollard later made a 360-degree return back
to the basics (studio experimentation, do-it-yourself recording and working
again with Matador). It was the sorta thing that put the Dayton,
OH quintet on the map in the first place.
Like
2002’s “Universal Truths and Cycles, “Earthquake Glue” is further evidence
Pollard has made good on his
promise, as he and his fellow mates still effortlessly churn out catchy,
melodic pop songs worthy of constant FM radio play. Most of the album
consists of chugging, mid-tempo offerings of pure pop bliss, GBV fans have
come to expect (“My Kind of Soldier,” “The Best of Jill Hives” and “She
Goes Off at Night”). Although Pollard still delivers the occasional tired
toss off (“Beat Your Wings” and “Mix Up the Satellite”), the acoustic treat
“My Son, My Secretary and My Country” coupled with the Mod-era urgency
of “Useless Inventions” and the studio tomfoolery of “I Will Replace You
With Machines,” which weighs in with twice the sonic bombast of the rest
of the album, adds considerable range and depth to another solid batch
of songs, keeping Pollard’s longtime legion of followers content but still
actively seeking out GBV’s next masterpiece.
For
info on upcoming gbv releases, go to matadorrecords.com
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