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?

On Oct 9, 2007, Robert Pollard simultaneously released two albums on Merge Records: Standard Gargoyle Decisions and Coast To Coast Carpet Of Love. Both now out of print, Pollard has reimagined and condensed the two as Our Gaze, a single fifteen song album. Because it’s better.

TRACK LISTING

1. The Killers
2. Pill Gone Girl
3. Count Us In
4. The Island Lobby
5. Rud Fins
6. Current Desperation
(Angels Speak Of Nothing)
7. Hero Blows The Revolution
8. Come Here Beautiful
9. Shadow Port
10. Miles Under The Skin
11. Folded Claws
12. Feel Not Crushed
13. Youth Leagues
14. When We Were Slaves
15. Our Gaze

Devil Between My Toes was the debut album by Guided By Voices, originally self-released by the group in February 1987 in an edition of 300 copies. Disillusioned by the lukewarm reception to the band’s debut EP the previous year, Robert Pollard resolved that this record would be conceived for an audience of one: “(it) is strictly for me and me only. Because no one’s going to buy it, no one gives a fuck, but I’m still gonna do it. So I might as well put only what I want on it, for me. An album for me.”

Even amongst the 30-odd proper GBV albums, Devil Between My Toes remains unique, and not simply because it was the first to be released. Much like its out-of-focus cover photo of the mean rooster next door (Big Daddy), the album’s vibe is dark, minimalist, and mysterious. Most of the album was recorded as a trio, and it contains more instrumentals than any other GBV album, but like the best LPs in their catalog, the sequencing renders these tracks essential to the flow and mood of the LP. While there are the expected Brit Invasion hookfests sprinkled throughout, we’re also treated to career highlights like the monolithic “A Portrait Destroyed by Fire” (Tobin Sprout’s first GBV appearance) and “Cyclops,” a track that would be right at home on Vampire On Titus had it been recorded more crudely.

TRACK LISTING

1. Old Battery
2. Discussing Wallace Chambers
3. Cyclops
4. Crux
5. A Portrait Destroyed By Fire
6. 3 Year Old Man
7. Dog's Out
8. A Proud And Booming Industry
9. Hank's Little Fingers
10. Artboat
11. Hey Hey, Spaceman
12. The Tumblers
13. Bread Alone
14. Captain's Dead

The mighty Guided By Voices are set to unleash upon the world their 35th and quite possibly…best album, Crystal Nuns Cathedral. How do they do it you might ask? Well we have no idea how they do it, but we certainly do know why they do it. They do it because quite honestly we need them to do it. The world needs The Rock, and we need loud guitars, we need anthemic songs, we need a reason to raise a rock fist in the air and give a “Hell Yeah”! On Crystal Nuns Cathedral, the band delivers all of this and so much more.

Just four months since It’s Not Them. It Couldn’t Be Them. It Is Them!, comes this latest, twelve songs determined to challenge for the title of greatest Guided by Voices album of all-time. Hyperbole you say? Not this time. The guitars are bigger, the arrangements are more ambitious, the songs are uplifting, epic, and as incredibly hook-laden as always!

Pure power pop perfection like lead single “Excited Ones” mix perfectly with the slow burning “Climbing A Ramp,” which reaches its climax on a stunning guitar lead before dissolving into the fist pumping anthem “Never Mind the List,” which serves as the beating heart of the entire album. Do you still need convincing? Listen to the one-two punch of “Forced to Sea” and “Huddled” and marvel at the epic scope and vision of an incredible band on full display.

This record is a statement, a challenge, a monument, a call to arms. Top this one if you can, this is the new benchmark. Who will best it? Who will try? Listen to Crystal Nuns Cathedral, and report back to us. We will be eagerly waiting.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: THIRTY FIVE albums later, and Pollard & co are sounding at possibly their most incendiary for years. It's a bold and raucous collection, punctuated with moments of levity and wry humour, and absolutely jam-packed with the riffs and psychedelic progressions we all know and love from this musical institution.

TRACK LISTING

1. Eye City
2. Re-Develop
3. Climbing A Ramp
4. Never Mind The List
5. Birds In The Pipe
6. Come North Together
7. Forced To Sea
8. Huddled
9. Excited Ones
10. Eyes Of Your Doctor
11. Mad River Man
12. Crystal Nuns Cathedral

It’s been just a few months since Guided By Voice’s faux rock opera Earth Man Blues garnered four-star and five-star reviews, with Rolling Stone proclaiming that it “squarely hits all the marks that make Guided By Voices great - again and again and again.”

“Again and again and again”, is perhaps GBV’s credo, with Robert Pollard’s never-ending supply of fascinating and supremely catchy rock. Just when one thinks one’s got them pinned down, album number thirty-four opens with bizarre percussion, mariachi trumpets, strings and acoustic guitar. The adventurous spirit pervades yet another killer album from the greatest and most versatile GBV line-up. The golden boys (Doug Gillard, Bobby Bare Jr, Mark Shue, Kevin March) can do no wrong.

Hooky singles “My (Limited) Engagement”, “High In The Rain” and “Dance of Gurus” intermingle with occasionally dark lyrics and the oddest of GBV oddballs, the ridiculous “Razor Bug”, “Psycho House”, and the “Maintenance Man Of The Haunted House”. The horns and strings return intermittently, with “The Bells Get Out Of The Way” going full Burt Bacharach. It’s Not Them. It Couldn’t Be Them. It Is Them! is a creative tourde- force full of surprises from the most prolific and captivating band on the planet.

TRACK LISTING

1. Spanish Coin
2. High In The Rain
3. Dance Of Gurus
4. Flying Without A License
5. Psycho House
6. Maintenance Man Of The Haunted House
7. I Share A Rhythm 8. Razor Bug
9. I Wanna Monkey
10. Cherub And The Great Child Actor
11. Black And White Eyes In A Prism
12. People Need Holes
13. The Bell Gets Out Of The Way
14. Chain Gang Island
15. My (Limited) Engagement

Is it really a musical?! The 33rd Guided By Voices album, Earth Man Blues, is a magical cinematic rock album, full of dramatic and surreal twists and turns. Lyrics and liner notes trace the growth of young Harold Admore Harold through a coming of age and a reckoning with darkness. Vivid scenes appear: snapshots of youth, fantastical nightmares, unknown worlds.

The music hasn’t softened a bit. One will hear the impossibly perfect melodies and word play that you expect from Robert Pollard, with the band playing at peak-heavy. “Trust Them Now” rocks like an instant classic, “The Batman Sees The Ball” is lean, mean rock muscle. Opener “Made Man” tears and slashes at the ears and heart. Sweeping, colossal tracks like “Lights Out (In Memphis, Egypt)” and “Dirty Kid School” stretch far beyond the ordinary vocabulary of rock.

Doug Gillard’s brilliant guitar playing explodes out of the speakers. The rhythm section of Kevin March and Mark Shue, always strong and reliable, has grown into a breathing composite organism. Along with Bobby Bare, Jr on rhythm guitar, they drive the songs and make one’s head shake. Producer Travis Harrison ties the talents of the band together, once again recorded remotely and individually, pandemic-style. This group brings to life the sounds in Pollard’s technicolor imagination.

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: 33 albums, I mean really now. I would be livid if Earth Man Blues wasn't such a brilliantly constructed and fiery distillation of everything they've done up to now. Hints of psychedelia, fuzzy garage and most of all, stunning power-pop a-la Grandaddy or Weezer. A brilliantly varied and hugely enjoyable listen. If they keep coming like this, then for the love of god i'll keep listening.

TRACK LISTING

1. Made Man
2. The Disconnected Citizen
3. The Batman Sees The Ball
4. Dirty Kid School
5. Trust Them Now
6. Lights Out In Memphis (Egypt)
7. Free Agents
8. Sunshine Girl Hello
9. Wave Starter
10. Any Repellent
11. Margaret Middle School
12. I Bet Hippy
13. Test Pilot
14. How Can A Plumb Be Perfected?
15. Child's Play

Styles We Paid For is Guided By Voices’ third album of 2020 and it stands as a testament to this Year In Isolation, reflecting these dark days through Robert Pollard’s prism, with the band sounding as confident and authoritative as ever. The fifteen tracks were recorded remotely during quarantine from five states (Ohio, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, Tennessee) to comprise GBV’s ninth album since 2017.

Pollard’s searing vocals hold center stage, with endless melodic invention and impeccable phrasing. The massively crescendo-ing opening track “Megaphone Riley” seems to be inspired by a diabolical politician-in-chief, and like an indie-rock Nostradamus, presciently highlights the “Jumbo Virus”, while in the final couplet of the album closer “When Growing Was Simple” Pollard urges “Don’t drink and drive / stay at home and eat”.

Other album highlights include include Big Rock standouts like the incredibly hooky “Mr. Child” with the band in full arena rock power swing, while the titular protagonist is mentioned by name no less than sixteen times; the touching beauty and lyrical relevance of “Stops” and the majestically elegant “In Calculus Stratagem”, a bubbly pop rock joyride in “Crash at Lake Placebo”; the subtle current-day technological observations of “They Don’t Play The Drums Anymore” and the sleek “Electronic Windows To Nowhere” (written by a man who owns neither a smart phone or a computer). It’s notably heavy in it’s worldliness, lyrical content, texture, and approach—and rides out like a cinematic journey of the bizarro world one find oneself in. While other bands have been napping, GBV have achieved their second consecutive hat-trick (three albums per annum), and have further cemented their status as rock legends for achieving more in this bleak year then most bands do across their entire careers.

TRACK LISTING

1. Megaphone Riley
2. They Don't Play The Drums Anymore
3. Slaughterhouse
4. Endless Seafood
5. Mr Child
6. Stops
7. War Of The Devils
8. Electronic Windows To Nowhere
9. Never Abandon Ship
10. Roll Me To Heaven
11. In Calculus Strategem
12. Crash At Lake Placebo
13. Liquid Kid
14. Time Without Looking
15. When Growing Was Simple

When we last heard from Guided By Voices, they had released an astonishing four albums in just over 12 months. Each has a distinctive creative identity: Zeppelin Over China was a meat-and-potatoes double album, Warp And Woof was a return to the band’s low-fidelity roots and under-two-minute earworms, Sweating The Plague was a slice of moody stadium rock, and Surrender Your Poppy Field was an unpredictable grab-bag of all of the above. After venturing through the tangled brambles of Plague and Poppy Field, here is a sunny summer reprieve, a relentless barrage of hooks—Mirrored Aztec is the latest stop on this runaway train.

Like its immediate predecessors, Mirrored Aztec is both its own entity and unmistakably GBV. It’s also their most immediately welcoming and inviting offering in years—there’s nothing a fan of The Who, Big Star, or Wire, wouldn’t love. For the GBV uninitiated, the clean, confident hooks of highlights “Bunco Men,” “Haircut Sphinx,” “A Whale Is Top Notch,” “Party Rages On” and the strummy “To Keep An Area” will resonate immediately. It also contains some unprecedented GBV moments, too, like “Math Rock,” an apparent tribute to the titular subgenre featuring classroom instruments and a children’s choir, “Please Don’t Be Honest,” a dreamy reversal of the band’s 2016 song and album Please Be Honest, and “Thank You Jane,” perhaps the most open-hearted, guileless power-pop song from Pollard’s pen in ages.

If Pollard’s discography—107 albums and counting—seems intimidating, do not fear! With a brand-new, high-quality, all-the-way there album every several months, it’s abundantly clear that no band’s fanbase has more fun.

TRACK LISTING

1. I Think I Had It. I Think I Have It Again
2. Bunco Men
3. Citizen’s Blitz
4. To Keep An Area
5. Easier Not Charming
6. Please Don’t Be Honest
7. Show Of Hands
8. Lip Curlers
9. Math Rock
10. Transfusion
11. Biker’s Nest
12. A Whale Is Top Notch
13. I Touch Down
14. Haircut Sphinx
15. Screaming The Night Away
16. Thank You Jane
17. The Best Foot Forwards
18. Party Rages

Starting off the year with a 100-song marathon in Los Angeles on New Year’s Eve, Robert Pollard is setting a mighty high bar for Guided By Voices in 2020. Following three acclaimed and stylistically distinct full-length albums in 2019, Surrender Your Poppy Field, is a headspinning tour de force: a bit of everything... plus more! And hands down the most adventurous GBV album ever. There are lo-fi four-track tape recordings, there are songs recorded with a single microphone in a basement, there are big studio fullyproduced hook-laden pop songs, and there is a lot in between. Seemingly, the guiding concept of Surrender Your Poppy Field was to make the songs sound as different from one another as possible: sudden shifts in mood, tempo and rhythm, unexpected chord progressions, false endings and codas, string orchestrations, mysterious voices... It’s an exhilarating and dizzying trip to an inventive world of strange characters: Andre the Hawk, Queen Parking Lot, the Cul-de-Sac Kids, the Hard Hitter, the Steely Dodger, the Stone Cold Moron, A Man Called Physician, A Man Called Blunder... Not content with their usual mastery of the 4 P’s (punk, pop, prog, psych) Professor Pollard pushes the envelope on Poppy Field, and continues to redefine GBV from a myriad of angles. Anyone who thinks that he’s gotten complacent after 104 albums hasn’t been paying attention! Don’t miss out.

A-side “Man Called Blunder” - Robert Pollard says "the recording is perfectly executed, the best performance of a GBV song, ever...”. Non-LP b-side is a sparkling remake of "She Wants To Know" from GBV’s 1986 debut Forever Since Breakfast. A side is Track from forthcoming NEW album!!!

A-side “Volcano” plus non-LP b-side “Sun Goes Down” is a piano ballad written and sung by GBV drummer Kevin March, an outlier in the GBV canon. Volcano from the NEW album… get on it.. these are mega limited.

Guided By Voices is now an unlikely candidate for the most perfect rock band of all time, while at the same time being a thoughtful reflection on what a rock band is, a fantasy that becomes a fact. Sweating The Plague, the band’s 29th album and their third this year, spars playfully with stadium-sized fidelity and uncharacteristically impactful arrangements. Producer Travis Harrison’s counterintuitive approach to Guided By Voices’ historically lo-fi sound is that he doesn’t want it to sound homemade, while the grinding tectonic plate guitars of Doug Gillard and Bobby Bare Jr. anchor the album. Play it loud! Being a fan of Guided By Voices can feel like standing in a ticker-tape parade and reaching out to grab at stray releases as the endless flurry of output from the Needmore Songs publishing house billows around—but here’s twelve compatible nuggets of Pollard content in one handy package, all boxed up and ready to go.

TRACK LISTING

1. Downer
2. Street Party
3. Mother's Milk Elementary
4. Heavy Like The World
5. Ego Central High
6. The Very Second
7. Tiger On Top
8. Unfun Glitz
9. Your Cricket Is Rather Unique
10. Immortals
11. My Wrestling Days Are Over
12. Sons Of The Beard

The final Matador album from Dayton, Ohio’s legendary geniuses Guided By Voices which, at the time, was set to be their last ever. After twenty- odd years, twenty-odd line ups and twenty-odd albums, EPs, singles, triples, stolen bases, misdemeanour convictions and broken hearts, Dayton’s fortunate sons took a leave of absence only to re-emerge in 2010 at a certain label’s 21st birthday celebrations in Las Vegas. Back in print for the first time since 2008!

TRACK LISTING

Everyone Thinks I’m A
Raincloud (When I’m Not
Looking)
Sleep Over Jack
Girls Of Wild
Strawberries
Gonna Never Have To Die
Window Of My World
Closets Of Henry
Tour Guide At Winston
Churchill Memorial
Asia Minor
Sons Of Apollo
Sing For Your Meat
Asphyxiated Circle
A Second Spurt Of
Growth
(S)Mothering And
Coaching
Huffman Prairie Flying

Following Guided By Voice’s sprawling double-album Zeppelin Over China, Robert Pollard has written and recorded another fulllength in record-breaking time. It’s Warp And Woof, exuberantly barreling through twenty-four songs in just thirty-seven minutes with a brevity similar to mid-90s GBV albums Alien Lanes and Vampire On Titus. GBV kicked this one out in a flash, recorded in studios, club soundchecks, hotel rooms and even in the tour van. After completing Zeppelin, Pollard felt the itch to record a few EPs. Just as GBV had done back in 1994, he would use them to channel his everflowing ideas to an outlet. But when a magical boombox writing session produced six fully formed songs in under half an hour, Pollard realized he had an album on his hands. What to do? With a band so formidable they’ve been dubbed the Golden Age of GBV, they completed much of the recording on the road. The 2018 Space Gun Tour provided impromptu recording venues. Pollard recorded vocals in hotel rooms, complimentary condominiums, and small studios. Doug Gillard cut guitar tracks for “End It With Light” through his Mesa Boogie rig at the soundcheck at the Ottobar in Baltimore. Bobby Bare Jr. recorded his spacey main rhythm guitars for album closer, “Time Remains in Central Position” at the same show, but in the backstage green room. Kevin March added drum tracks in a studio in his hometown Montclair, New Jersey. Gillard played guitar on “Bury the Mouse” in a van hurtling at 60-plus m.p.h., and Mark Shue laid bass on “Angelic Weirdness” as he balanced on the speeding van’s bench seat…. Two London shows in early June, their first in years and years, sold out in a matter of days and hours… GBV is still prime time!!

TRACK LISTING

1. Bury The Mouse
2. Angelic Weirdness
3. Foreign Deputies
4. Dead Liquor Store
5. Mumbling Amens
6. Cohesive Scoops
7. Photo Range Within
8. My Dog Surprise
9. Tiny Apes
10. Blue Jay House
11. Down The Island
12. Thimble Society
13. My Angel
14. More Reduction Linda
15. Cool Jewels And Aprons
16. Even Next
17. It Will Never Be Simple
18. The Stars Behind Us
19. Skull Arrow
20. Out Of The Blue Race
21. Coming Back From Now On
22. The Pipers, The Vipers, The Snakes!
23. Time Remains In Central Position
24. End It With Light

One of two limited edition 7” EPs previewing 6 songs each from the upcoming Warp And Woof long-player. Recorded at soundchecks, hotel rooms and in the tour van, all dozen songs clocking in at 2 minutes or under, recalling the spontaneous spirit of 1993-94 eps Fast Japanese Spin Cycle, Static Airplane Jive and Clown Prince of the Menthol Trailer.

One of two limited edition 7” EPs previewing 6 songs each from the upcoming Warp And Woof long-player. Recorded at soundchecks, hotel rooms and in the tour van, all dozen songs clocking in at 2 minutes or under, recalling the spontaneous spirit of 1993-94 eps Fast Japanese Spin Cycle, Static Airplane Jive and Clown Prince of the Menthol Trailer.

With the recent Space Gun, Guided By Voices has focused on just a single album per year while touring the new songs across America throughout 2018. That doesn’t mean that the ultra-prolific Robert Pollard is vacationing or sunning himself by the pool. Here’s a 7” vinyl preview of the insanely anthemic "You Own the Night" (from the forthcoming February 2019 double album Zeppelin Over China) backed with "Your Cricket is Rather Unique” (from the forthcoming February 2020 album Street Party) The single is a limited edition of 1000 - just 300 copies going to retail.

Like a long-lost artifact from some golden age of rock that never existed, ESP Ohio’s debut album grabs the ear-holes and demands immediate and undivided attention. Robert Pollard says it’s a band, rather than a collaboration - a distinction which may seem like splitting hairs, but rather than putting melodies and lyrics on top of other people’s instrumentals, Pollard wrote these songs and sent them off to Brooklyn-based bandmates Doug Gillard, Mark Shue, and Travis Harrison to be fleshed out and then returned to him for vocal recording and mixing in the Buckeye State. Instead of fitting words and melodies around someone else’s musical structure, he created the musical structure to fit his words and melodies. Also, there’s a band photo.

It makes a difference - Starting Point harkens back to Isolation Drills-era Guided By Voices, perhaps inevitably because Doug Gillard is playing guitar and contributing arrangements the way he did in that era of GBV, but this debut has its own unique characteristics as well. The result is some of the most joyful noise Pollard has made in recent memory: melodic, playful, upbeat, and … what’s the word… sparkly? Sure - call it sparkle rock - a mix of bold-faced rock with weirdo proggypsych elements and textures.

Pollard won’t say whether this is a one-off or the first of a series, but he’s keeping the door open. Maybe that’s a key to his “process”: always keep the door open. After countless songs, records, bands, line-ups, accolades, bottles of tequila… after everything, the door to the porches of Pollard’s ears (this is an awkward and inappropriate allusion to Hamlet) remain open to the far-out whispers of his muse.

TRACK LISTING

1. A Much Needed Shot In The Arm
2. The Great One
3. Tom Tom Small And Wonderful
4. Miss Hospital '93
5. Bird Man Of Cloth
6. Intercourse Fashion
7. You The Earthman
8. Flowers And Magazines
9. Royal Cyclopean
10. Weakened By A Logical Mind
11. Girls' House
12. This Violent Side
13. The Ticket Who Rallied
14. Sleeping Through The Noise
15. Lithuanian Bombshells
16. Grand Beach Finale

The Fading Captain series is known for its collectablity factor and its rareness. These aspects of the label excite many, but sadly, has been known to disappoint others. The most sought-after items on the label have been the 7" EPs. There have been three of them, one from the Guided By Voices and two more from Airport 5 (a couple of guys also from Dayton, Ohio) and they have been combined here and called "Selective Service'.