GUIDED BY VOICES – Nowhere To Go But Up

In February 2020, Guided By Voices released their thirtieth full length album, ‘Surrender Your Poppy Field’. At the point where it appeared on record shop shelves, it was seen as just another album from the ever prolific Robert Pollard. At the time, nobody really knew it would be vastly overlooked due to the world grinding to a halt a few weeks later. As it turned out, though, the disc was far from the band’s best. It boasted a grand opening track, and shared a couple of other fine tunes within its thirty nine minutes, but in terms of exciting GBV fare, it seemed rather lacklustre compared to 2018’s ‘Space Gun’ and 2019’s ‘Warp & Woof’ and ‘Sweating The Plague’.

Continue reading

GUIDED BY VOICES – Surrender Your Poppy Field

After Guided By Voices reunited in 2012, the band went into recording overdrive. Robert Pollard’s abilities to be prolific were always known – at any one time, he could be working on a variety of projects – but few would have suspected the band would release three albums of brand new material in a little over ten months. Their comeback disc ‘Let’s Go Eat The Factory’ was a return to many of the ramshackle lo-fi experiments that filled the much-loved ‘Alien Lanes’ and while it sounded great upon release, time has allowed a little rust to set in. Some of the moments that sounded like welcome imperfections now sound like generic GBV filler rather than lo-fi quirks. Thanks to a few amazing tunes – and a really catchy single in ‘Doughnut For A Snowman’ – it’s worth a spin once in a while, but looking at the much bigger picture, it ranks somewhere in the mid table of the band’s vast output.

Continue reading

Guided By Voices to release ‘Zeppelin Over China’ in February; announce first UK show in 15 years

Lo-fi indie legends Guided By Voices are set to release their twenty seventh studio album in February 2019.  Scheduled for release on the 1st of the month, the mammoth thirty two track ‘Zeppelin Over China’ will be, unbelievably, the Ohio legends’ tenth album since releasing ‘Let’s Go Eat The Factory’ in 2012.

In addition, there’s more great news for UK fans, since Robert Pollard and company have confirmed a UK visit.  Since their appearance at All Tomorrow’s Parties in 2011 was cancelled, this will be the first UK GBV gig in fifteen years.

More details on the new album and gig, along with a link to a streaming track can be found in the press release below.  Real Gone’s review of ‘Let’s Go Eat The Factory’ can be read here.

***

Continue reading