Guided by Voices “Let's Go Eat the Factory”

Full disclosure: I am a GBV superfan and unabashed lover of the golden age of indie rock. That said, it was easy to be skeptical about another 90s reunion and about a new Guided by Voices album. Initially reunited for Matador's 21st birthday in September 2010 in Las Vegas, the 'classic lineup' GBV extended the party through a U.S. tour and some festival dates. The Matador Vegas show was a triumph and the rest of reunion shows were by all accounts revelatory and enthusiastically received. The show I saw in Detroit was incredibly fun, a 2.5 hour fan love-in. They drank/I drank, Bob sang/I sang, they conquered/I was conquered. But to expect that band to imprint a new batch of songs with the magic of the early material was a stretch.   

Mitch Mitchell takes a break from smoking & guitar
windmills to meet GBV fans in Detroit, Oct/10.



The New Year brings Let's Go Eat the Factory and right from the hop I can say the new album will not win this franchise a ton of new fans. Bob Pollard took a swipe at reaching a bigger audience 10+ years ago with line-up changes, major league producers, major label albums and wide-eyed, shoulda hits like Teenage FBI and Glad Girls. Now 54, I don't think he gives a shit about expanding the fanbase. Bob Pollard puts out a quarterly album rain or shine, so he was due to issue something right about now anyway.

But in an expletive and a word - it's fucking great.

The thing that separates LGEtF from his prolific & frustratingly unfiltered solo work is that there is a communal spirit here. While still capable of stunning highs, too much of Pollard's post-GBV output comes off workmanlike - a couple of guys fleshing out his dictaphone hums. This new/old GBV is a collaborative effort, brimming with the adventurous spirit of their early 90's work and proof of the benefits of Bob letting his pals in on the vision. The years removed have shown Tobin Sprout's importance to those 'classic era' GBV albums and his plaintive, innocent sound is an old sweater here, providing dynamic balance with the psych pop twists of Pollard's stranger songs. He brings 5 songs to the 21 song set, highlighted by the shapeshifting "Spiderfighter", a drone popper in which he sings of an 'old clown in old cloths', only to turn to gear down to an effective lone piano and stark refrain 'now is the time I make up your mind'. More familiar territory for Sprout is the chugging "Waves" lead by a melodic bass line and the effective, childlike ballad "Who Invented the Sun".  

LGEtF is a grower. On first listen, it sounds like vintage GBV - crescendos of melody bursting out through a bedrock of growling guitars in lower mid-fi sound quality. The hooks are not obvious or all that easy, but there is something here for everyone. On first spin, the jingling "Doughnut for a Snowman" and perfect warm pop of "Chocolate Boy" jump up to be noticed but it's the next few laps that reveal the full treasures of this album. "Imperial Racehorsing" is a strange nugget, triumphant with trumpets announcing a Beatlesque outro. More surprising flourishes abound throughout with pianos and horns figuring prominently. "Either Nelson" is rollicking fun: 'I challenge you to rock / I challenge you to proper drinking' Pollard declares while a silly fake-jazz piano works hard to make a mess of a simple melody. "My Europa" and "The Room Taking Shape" together take less than three minutes of your time, but like some of my favourite Pollard songs throughout the years and countless albums are lo-fi ballad snippets that drift by through a few listens but eventually sink in and become indelible testaments to just how masterful a songwriter he is. 

The strongest track on the album is thematic centrepiece "The Unsinkable Fats Domino". A gem that would easily fit into their marathon encores, it best captures the spirit of the reunion. Inspired by the story of Fats waiting on his roof to be rescued during Hurricane Katrina: 'above the swell they found him / on common grounds that drown them', the image of an aging legend refusing to succumb to rising tides suits Pollard and his mates well here. LGEtF isn't quite an instant classic GBV album, but 15 years later, it picks up the plot at a logical spot. Far from sounding like a second run, this is a confident, interesting and dense artistic statement and I'll drink to that.  



...and stay tuned, Guided by Voices will issue the next chapter of the new classic era later this year with a new album entitled Class Clown Spots A UFO (Bob likes to start with the title). And of course, he will also be releasing a solo record in March called Mouseman Cloud.