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GUIDED BY VOICE, INC

Guided By Voices

Nowhere To Go But Up

    This record is massive and amazing. Nowhere To Go But Up is Guided By Voices’ third album of 2023 (and thirty-ninth overall) and is a sprawling, wild adventure. With virtually no choruses and just two repeated lyrics in forty minutes, GBV is audacious and unafraid.

    One of the most fully realized works that Guided By Voices has created, Nowhere To Go But Up showcases an expert rock band at the top of their game. The band is on a roll and unstoppable.

    Following their monumental 40th Anniversary Celebration in Dayton, Ohio, GBV begins their fifth decade with a bang!

    STAFF COMMENTS

    Barry says: You'd think that by an artists THIRTY NINTH album, they'd have a struggle coming up with the goods, but Pollard & co have once again crafted a beautifully psychedelic blast of epic proportions. It's got tons of heft, and packed to the brim with melody too.

    TRACK LISTING

    1. The Race Is On, The King Is Dead
    2. Puncher's Parade
    3. Local Master Airplane
    4. How Did He Get Up There?
    5. Stabbing At Fractions
    6. Love Set
    7. We're Going The Wrong Way In
    8. Jack Of Legs
    9. For The Home
    10. Cruel For Rats
    11. Song And Dance

    Guided By Voices

    Welshpool Frillies

      Robert Pollard has a very strong work ethic. With most of their touring canceled due to the pandemic and then a fractured kneecap, Guided By Voices ran up an extremely prolific streak in the studio, recording and releasing eight albums in the past three years and garnering piles of rave four star and five star reviews in the process. In case one were snoozing, the last album, La La Land was Uncut magazine’s “Best Of The Month.”

      The pandemic records were particularly notable and unique that the band members recorded most of their instruments individually in separate cities. Welshpool Frillies finds the gang back together, in a Brooklyn basement with producer Travis Harrison. Much of it was recorded live to tape. The catchy ear worms in these new songs are undeniable, as the kinetic energy of the band is captured in its most raw and pure form. The album is brash, no-frills, and punky, inspired by the wiliness of 90s-era GBV, specifically the Scalping The Guru compilation that Pollard put together in 2022. 2023 marks the 40th anniversary of GBV’s start in Dayton, Ohio. Robert Pollard was an elementary school teacher with no formal music training, and his unlikely success has been an odds-defying adventure. It’s never too late to discover this vital rock band and join the GBV cult.

      Guided By Voices

      La La Land

        La La Land doubles down on the intricate proggy-pop displayed on Guided By Voices’s last album Tremblers And Goggles By Rank. On a hot streak of critical acclaim, Robert Pollard continues expanding his songwriting towards extremes of prettiness, heaviness and poeticism. As always, unforgettable hooks are everywhere. But with this latest, it seems Pollard is playing with the extremes of his abilities as a songwriter, emboldened by the power of this lineup now on their fourteenth album together since 2017. The prettiest stuff is prettier than ever (“Queen Of Spaces”) and odder, more complex songs like “Slowly On The Wheel” combine minimalism, whimsy, and cinematic inclinations. There are the exquisite power pop bangers that fans come to expect like “Ballroom Etiquette” and “Pockets.” Tracks like “Instinct Dwelling” and “Caution Song” effortlessly display a cranked-up weight and complexity most bands could never muster. Celebrating forty years in 2023 with their thirty-eighth album, GBV has lately been garnering rave reviews from Rolling Stone, Stereogum, Brooklyn Vegan, Uncut, MOJO, Shindig, Paste, Popmatters, The Quietus and many more.

        TRACK LISTING

        1. Released Into Dementia
        2. Ballroom Etiquette
        3. Instinct Dwelling
        4. Queen Of Spaces
        5. Slowly On The Wheel
        6. Cousin Jackie
        7. Wild Kingdom
        8. Caution Song
        9. Face Eraser
        10. Pockets

        Guided By Voices

        Scalping The Guru

          Scalping The Guru is an archival Guided By Voices release, envisioned and sequenced by Robert Pollard as a cohesive album, featuring select tracks from four GBV EPs released in 1993-1994 by Domino, City Slang, Siltbreeze and Engine Records. These hard to find records are essential for fans of Vampire On Titus and Bee Thousand, with classics including “My Impression Now,” “Matter Eater Lad,” and “Big School.” They feature the line-up that includes Robert Pollard with Tobin Sprout, Mitch Mitchell, Kevin Fennell, Jim Pollard, Dan Toohey, Greg Demos, and Larry Keller. Recorded on four-track cassette by Tobin Sprout, with some songs lovingly fucked with by Mike Hummel.

          TRACK LISTING

          1. Matter Eater Lad
          2. Damn Good Mr. Jam
          3. Hunter Complex
          4. My Impression Now
          5. Scalding Creek
          6. Mobile
          7. Melted Pat
          8. Glow Boy Butlers
          9. Hey Aardvark
          10. Spring Tiger
          11. Rubber Man
          12. Big School
          13. Volcano Divers
          14. Indian Fables
          15. Pink Gun
          16. Dusty Bushworms
          17. Gelatin, Ice Cream Plum
          18. Grandfather Westinghouse
          19. Johnny Appleseed
          20. Scalping The Guru

          Guided By Voices

          Tremblers And Goggles By Rank

            Tremblers And Goggles By Rank marks a new phase in Robert Pollard’s songwriting evolution. His songs have always included non-traditional approaches to form and song structure, but with this album, he has pushed it further than ever. While the familiar Guided By Voices pop-craft and melodic virtuosity always occupies center stage, the first-time listener will never be able to predict what’s coming next in a song.

            “Alex Bell” and “Focus On The Flock” are the two anchors, each one expansive and filled with rock grandeur, and both exemplifying the complex wordplay, melodies, and structures that are hallmarks of the album.

            GBV’s latest batch of brilliant songs ride on colorful psychedelic flourishes and brash post-punk textures that make this ten-song album a one-of-a-kind head trip.

            While there are hooks and earworms aplenty within, this album is a complex and kaleidoscopic journey, representing a new echelon in the Guided By Voices universe. It represents another level of songwriting and performance from the group. It plays out like an intricate and powerful collage, in a very multicolored and multi-faceted fashion; a work grand in scale and undertaking.

            There are triumphant and glorious choruses, deep and dark wormholes, sinewy twists and turns, bold and theatrical bravados, massive cliffs, plateaus, peaks, and valleys - these emotional landscapes reach new and unexpected heights along the way.

            TRACK LISTING

            1. Lizard On The Red Brick Wall
            2. Alex Bell
            3. Unproductive Funk
            4. Roosevelt's Marching Band
            5. Goggles By Rank
            6. Cartoon Fashion (Bongo Lake)
            7. Boomerang
            8. Focus On The Flock
            9. Puzzle Two
            10. Who Wants To Go Hunting?


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