Tag Archives: guided by voices

QUIZ SHOW – XONO EP

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Quiz Show’s 2024 EP release ‘Flotsam’ often played like a musical love letter to the alternative rock boom of the 90s. Taking influences from Superchunk and the earliest, noisier works of Buffalo Tom, and occasionally applying a quietLOUDquiet approach to the arrangements – as per Pixies and Nirvana – it gave fans of the grunge era lots to enjoy in a small package. ‘XONO’ – shared in the Autumn of ’26 – finds the band, founded by Shudder To Think’s Chris Matthews, sticking to what they know. But that’s something they do very well indeed.

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THE DAMBUILDERS – Shrine 2026 / I Hope We’re Not Too Late

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Back in the 90s, The Dambuilders released a string of albums that gained a cult following. With competition from the likes of Cracker, Sponge, and a wealth of other alternative bands circa 1994/5, they never hit the “big leagues”, at least in the truest sense, but they were one of those acts that really seemed to capture the essence of the US “college rock” sound. In the UK, their fifth album ‘Ruby Red’ could occasionally be spotted in London’s bargain bins, and for those who took the time to listen, it was an album that offered much to enjoy – especially for lovers of the equally undervalued Green Apple Quick Step and Mother May I.

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Listen: A Phone Call From Oliver Reed (A Real Gone Sampler 2023)

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The year end “sampler” has long been one of our year end traditions at Real Gone. Although in recent years, the sampler has taken the form of an online stream as opposed to a traditional download, we’ve continued to receive good feedback about the annual project, and still managed to introduce people to things they missed throughout the previous twelve months.

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GUIDED BY VOICES – Nowhere To Go But Up

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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’.

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Rubies & Rudders: The Real Gone Sampler 2020

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It’s that time of year again when Real Gone takes stock of all of the great music that’s been sent our way over the last twelve months.  Changes in how people consume their music has meant shifting from providing a free download to offering an album length stream, but the variety and quality of the new music remains very high.

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