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Jul 21, 2023 Web Exclusive By Michael James Hall

Another day, another new Guided By Voices album. It’s easy to be facetious about the output of a band that’s released eight albums since 2020. While Robert Pollard’s cult legends proliferation of new music may give the impression of disposability, the records themselves almost always bear up to closer individual scrutiny.

In the band’s 40th year, Dayton, Ohio’s indie legends throw out a collection that both defies the band’s age and serves as a shimmering highlight in the constant, often delightful stream of GBV output. Pollard’s malleable, memorable melodies weave through gloriously shabby, guitar pop tunes like “Meet the Star” and “Awake Man.” This beautiful, deceptively basic rock gives way to their trademark, lo-fi, truncated balladry on “Chain Dance” and, at its many sublime, psychedelic peaks, songs such as the glorious “Seedling” and melancholic ‘Better Odds’ happily recall the band’s ’90s “commercial” prime.

The thundering “Romeo Surge,” anthemic “Why Won’t You Kiss Me,” and the taut tumult of “Don’t Blow Your Dream Job” flesh out a varied, but uniformly beguiling album that feels simultaneously fresh, invigorating, and sweetly nostalgic. John Peel once famously described The Fall as “always different, always the same,” and this surely applies to GBV; their relentless search for the perfect pop tune now a given, their sense of absurdity and wicked charm making another trip around their sun a joyful, vital adventure. (www.guidedbyvoices.com)

Author rating: 7.5/10