Guided By Voices

Guided By Voices

Nowhere To Go But Up

GBV Inc

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!

Guided By Voices

Self-Inflicted Aerial Nostalgia

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***ON LIMITED CLEAR YELLOW VINYL!!! Self-Inflicted Aerial Nostalgia was Guided By Voices’ third album, self-released by the band in 1988 in a pressing of 500. While both of the band’s earlier albums exhibit strong songwriting and plenty of vision, it is here that the GBV sound really begins to coalesce. While Devil Between My Toes is rife with contrasts, variety, and dark psychedelia, and its follow up Sandbox is a cohesive ’60s-influenced affair, Self-Inflicted Aerial Nostalgia marries the two approaches to outstanding effect. Unsurprisingly, recording began before Sandbox was even done pressing. These sessions would yield an aborted LP titled Learning To Hunt, but after personnel changes and second thoughts, Robert Pollard shelved most of the tracks, dismissing them as too similar to those on Sandbox. Fair enough, as many of Pollard’s more recent songs were simply on another level than previously. Here are the first of the classic Pollard slow-burners, often built on a simple melodic or rhythmic figure that circles itself ever outward, accumulating heft, variation, and inevitability as the song evolves into something unexpected yet inevitable. It’s the aural equivalent to watching a butterfly grow out of its cocoon. A few things are unique to this particular LP. Original powerhouse drummer Peyton Eric returns for nearly half the tracks, while engineer and lead guitarist Steve Wilbur shines at his brightest, resulting in some of the most thoroughly rocking GBV songs to ever be cut to lacquer, such as “Earful o’ Wax,” which simply explodes out of...

Guided By Voices

Welshpool Frillies

GBV Inc

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

Sandbox

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***ON LIMITED GLACIAL BLUE VINYL!!! Even back in 1987, Guided By Voices was not content to release just one album in a year—Sandbox was released in the summer of that year following Devil Between My Toes’ appearance that February. Likewise, in similar GBV style, the sound and approach of the two albums could not be more different. Where Devil mostly mines a darker, lo-fi psychedia, along with several instrumental explorations, Sandbox is sunny, direct, has a bigger, crunchier sound, and zero instrumentals. Where Devil has a murky and impressionistic black and white photo of a rooster for a cover, Sandbox sports a full color photo of the band relaxing on a lawn on a sunny day. Let’s also recall that unlike today, in 1987 a full-color album jacket wasn’t just a little more expensive than a black and white one, it was way more expensive. Right up front, the band was communicating that this was a more commercially ambitious endeavor, while behind the scenes they rented better gear for a bigger sound, and tackled more sophisticated arrangements and honed in on the hooks and harmonies of the songs. Of all the band’s early self-released albums, Sandbox differs the most from the sound fans would later associate with the group, which is in itself a recommendation. Nowhere else will you hear the perfectly rendered three-part harmonies of “Long Distance Man,” direct Beatles quotes, or Robert Pollard reveling in his southern Ohio drawl. It’s also true that one of the more enjoyable...

Guided By Voices

La La Land

GBV Inc

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 thsi 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.

Guided By Voices

Scalping The Guru

GBV Inc

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.

Guided By Voices

Alex Bell B/w Focus On The Flock

GBV Inc

Epic new GBV! Pollard gets ambitious and wild. "Alex Bell” is a 5 minute tour-de-force. Limited edition of 1000 copies.

Guided By Voices

Tremblers And Goggles By Rank

GBV Inc

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.

Guided By Voices

Crystal Nuns Cathedral

GBV Inc

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,...

Guided By Voices

It's Not Them. It Couldn't Be Them. It Is Them!

GBV Inc

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 tour-de-force full of surprises from the most prolific and captivating band on the planet.

Guided By Voices

Earth Man Blues

GBV Inc

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.

Guided By Voices

(color) Propeller

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Propeller was the fifth album by Guided By Voices, and was intended to be the group’s last. Released as a limited edition of 500 LPs in 1992, the album featured handmade covers and blank labels to keep expenses as low as possible. Their other albums hadn’t sold much, why would this one? Robert Pollard had a family to support and his musical aspirations had not exactly been a boon to their bank account.As fate would have it, the band wound up releasing an album chock full of gems Pollard had stockpiled, and for the first time sounded distinctly like the band that fans have since come to love. Propeller also marks the return of Tobin Sprout to the GBV fold, along with an increased songwriting presence. From anthem-to-be “Over the Neptune” to the effortless melodies of closer “On the Tundra,” Propeller is a hell of a ride, and remains one of the most important albums in the band’s discography.The vinyl edition has been out of print for a decade, and features different cover art than previous pressings. The CD edition has been out of print for a minute as well, and is now housed in digipak format, also with a new, unique cover from one of the original pressings. And for the first time Propeller is available on cassette.

Guided By Voices

Styles We Paid For

GBV Inc

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...

Guided By Voices

Mirrored Aztec

GBV Inc

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...

Guided By Voices

Surrender Your Poppy Field

GBV Inc

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 head-spinning 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 fully-produced 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.

Guided By Voices

Man Called Blunder B/w She Wants To Know

GBV Inc

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.

Guided By Voices

Volcano B/w Sun Goes Down

GBV Inc

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.

Guided By Voices

Sweating The Plague

GBV Inc

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.

Guided By Voices

Heavy Like The World

GBV Inc

"Heavy Like The World" is the subliminally seductive single from the forthcoming Guided By Voices album Sweating The Plague.  “Silent Army” is a non-lp b-side.    Guided By Voices is 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.

Guided By Voices

Warp And Woof

GBV Inc

Following Guided By Voice’s sprawling double-album Zeppelin Over China, Robert Pollard has written and recorded another full-length 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...

Guided By Voices

1901 Acid Rock

GBV Inc

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.

Guided By Voices

Umlaut Over The Ozone

GBV Inc

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.

Guided By Voices

Zeppelin Over China

GBV Inc

***BACK IN STOCK ON LP!!!  Zeppelin Over China is a major and majestic work in the GBV canon, spotlighting the scope and genius of Robert Pollard’s songwriting. With thirty-two songs in 75 minutes, the massive double-album Zeppelin reaches lofty heights on its musical journey. Pollard continues to deliver endless invention and emotional wallop in two and three-minute guitar rock gems. Pollard has assembled his greatest supporting cast ever—Doug Gillard (guitar), Kevin March (drums), Mark Shue (bass), Bobby Bare Jr. (guitar) and Travis Harrison (engineer)—and this line-up’s virtuosic talents spur him to his most ambitious work yet, a grand album of emotional resonance and narrative drama.  After well-deserved acclaim for the mind-boggling milestone of Pollard’s 100 career albums, Zeppelin Over China is a wonderful entry point for new listeners to experience Guided By Voices for the first time. Not resting on his laurels, Pollard’s tireless tenacity pays off with spectacular results.

Guided By Voices

100 Dougs

GBV Inc

After 2018’s critically acclaimed Space Gun LP and a string of jaw-dropping, sold-out shows, GUIDED BY VOICES has announced a sprawling double-album, Zeppelin Over China. to be released on February 1. But before this one has even made it to the warehouse, Robert Pollard has written and recorded another full-length in record-breaking time. It’s Warp and Woof (April 2019), exuberantly barreling through 24 songs in just 37 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.   And because you can never have too much GBV, the album is being teased on four vinyl-only (1000 copies) limited edition 7-inch EPs: Winecork Stonehenge and 100 Dougs will be released in November. Umlaut Over The Özone and 1901 Acid Rock in March.

Guided By Voices

Winecork Stonehenge

GBV Inc

After 2018’s critically acclaimed Space Gun LP and a string of jaw-dropping, sold-out shows, GUIDED BY VOICES has announced a sprawling double-album, Zeppelin Over China. to be released on February 1. But before this one has even made it to the warehouse, Robert Pollard has written and recorded another full-length in record-breaking time. It’s Warp and Woof (April 2019), exuberantly barreling through 24 songs in just 37 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.   And because you can never have too much GBV, the album is being teased on four vinyl-only (1000 copies) limited edition 7-inch EPs: Winecork Stonehenge and 100 Dougs will be released in November. Umlaut Over The Özone and 1901 Acid Rock in March.

Guided By Voices

You Own The Night

GBV Inc

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.

Guided By Voices

Space Gun

GBV Inc

***BACK IN STOCK!!!  In 2018, Guided By Voices will release precisely one new album, Space Gun. Once you hear it, you will know why.  With a renowned work ethic and a daily pot of coffee, Robert Pollard continues to outclass younger generations of come-and-go rock bands. After 20+ years, 100+ albums, 2000+ songs, Pollard still can’t really explain (or doesn’t want to explain) his secret: “The songs just come to me.” In 2017, the new GBV line-up (veterans Doug Gillard and Kevin March and newcomers Mark Shue and Bobby Bare Jr) blew audiences away and toured behind the ambitious and sprawling multi-vocalist double album August By Cake, followed just months later by the concise punchy and catchy How Do You Spell Heaven. Pollard has acknowledged that this line-up’s adroit talents pushes him to more daring and dizzying heights. The band will be touring throughout 2018.  And now, here it comes: Space Gun, the fullest realization yet of Pollard’s song talents, with the band firing on all cylinders. There’s humor and whimsical childlike musings, cinematic grace and elegance, heavy duty propulsion, dark futuristic undercurrents, twists and turns and kinetic magic. This is a band that turns on a dime, rips it up, psychs it out and can radically shape-shift to realize a three-act rock opera in 2 minutes and 48 seconds. Robert Pollard is a lyrical master; not a word out of place, every line bristling with surprise, telling a story that’s both irresistible and impossible. Invention and imagination...

Guided By Voices

See My Field

GBV Inc

“See My Field” is the second single from GBV’s masterful Space Gun (coming March 23) The new GBV line-up (Robert Pollard / Doug Gillard / Kevin March / Mark Shue / Bobby Bare Jr.) is blazing hot, and recently wowed audiences at Growlers Fest and Coachella.  The band boasts that the album is so good, they are putting out just one new album in 2018!    Two non-LP power pop b-sides, sung & written by drummer Kevin March (“Leave Tomorrow”) and bassist Mark Shue ("Disconnected Eyes”) available on vinyl only.

Guided By Voices

How Do You Spell Heaven

GBV Inc

***BACK IN STOCK!!!  Received a 7.4 rating from Pitchfork.  Guided By Voices is on a roll. One could argue that GBV is never not on a roll, that Robert Pollard’s output plows past the word “prolific” like prolific is standing still in a snowbank; and that’s true, but this new version of the band (Doug Gillard, Bobby Bare Jr, Mark Shue, Kevin March) has given Pollard new tools to complement his song-hammer. Thus, ergo, quod erat demonstrandum: roll. Hot on the heels of the smothered-in-plaudits double album August By Cake comes this hot and heavy fifteen-tune long player, a melody-dense thwack to the earholes that will both energize and deplete your body of its remaining music-appreciation enzymes. Recorded by the band in New York, and by Pollard in Ohio, How Do You Spell Heaven capitalizes on the current incarnation’s tour-buffed shine without sacrificing eternal verities such as but not limited to: off-kilter rhythmic jolts; krazy chords; purposefully imperfect harmonies; and fragmented structures that start and stop on a coin of small denomination and go somewhere else, and quickly. There’s more, much more—the easiest, laziest way to sum up this latest album is the most obvious: How do you spell heaven? Shout it from the rafters: G-B-V!

Guided By Voices

August By Cake

GBV Inc

Guided By Voices’ August By Cake is the one hundredth studio album that Robert Pollard has released since 1986’s Forever Since Breakfast. To put that in perspective, Bob Dylan has released roughly thirty nine studio albums since 1959. And that includes the Traveling Wilburys. This is a highly anticipated record, which includes the new line-up (returning GBV veterans Doug Gillard and Kevin March, virgins Bobby Bare Jr and Mark Shue) that has been wowing audience in clubs and festivals throughout 2016. It’s the most musically adept and versatile line-up Pollard has ever assembled. With thirty two songs, this album is also GBV’s first ever doublealbum, and song contributions from all five band members is additional icing on the cake, setting album #100 apart from the previous ninetynine. The double album is an important format in Pollard’s own musical iconography, and he doesn’t take the form lightly — one reason he’s planned and abandoned several would-be GBV double albums in the past is his high regard for foundational works like Quadrophenia, the White Album, The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway, Daydream Nation, Zen Arcade, Double Nickels On the Dime — “defining records for these bands,” says Pollard. It’s important to him that August By Cake not just be a double album but that it be a great one

Guided By Voices

Please Be Honest

GBV Inc

Robert Pollard wrote and recorded and played all the instruments on Please Be Honest, and when he finished, it felt to him like a Guided By Voices record. He’s not wrong. The songs are compact and tuneful, the playing expertly slack, the production raw and unpolished: sounds pretty much like every review of Bee Thousand.  A better cognate, however, might be Vampire on Titus, Pollard’s 1993 pre-Bee Thousand (somewhat overlooked) lo-fi tour de force. On that record, Pollard similarly played every instrument—though his drumming skills then were so rudimentary that he had to record the bass drum and the snare parts separately, which is no longer the case—and as with everything he does, it’s about the songs, man. Of which Please Be Honest has no shortage, fifteen of them clocking in at just over 33 minutes. The point being there’s precedent for a GBV record where Pollard plays everything, and maybe more importantly there’s a reason for that precedent. Robert Pollard is Guided By Voices. This has never not been true, certainly, and is now more true than ever. He delights in confounding expectations, and you have to at least suspect that after over 20 years of making records under any number of pseudonyms, of which Guided By Voices is just one, and maybe not even his favorite one, he chafes at the notion that there exists some Platonic ideal of “Guided By Voices” that isn’t just Bob writing and recording the songs with whatever musicians he wants to...

Guided By Voices

Suitcase 4: Captain Kangaroo Won The War

GBV Inc

Presenting Suitcase 4: Captain Kangaroo Won the War, another astonishing installment of 100 Guided By Voices rarities, demos, alternate versions, outtakes and discards spanning over two decades of Robert Pollard’s career.  Highlights are early versions of classic Pollard songs from Propellor (1992), Vampire on Titus (1993), Bee Thousand (1994), Alien Lanes (1995), Isolation Drills (2001), Earthquake Glue (2003), Class Clown Spots a UFO (2012), as well as 2015 demos previewing Pollard’s much talked about 2016 solo album Of Course You Are.  Included here are versions of “Wished I Was a Giant,” “Postal Blowfish,” “Goldheart Mountaintop,” “Quality Of Armor,” “Motor Away,” “Hardcore UFOs,” “Echos Myron,” “Dirty Water,” “Tractor Rape Chain (Clean It Up),” “Queen Of Cans And Jars,” “Glad Girls,” “He Rises! Our Union Bellboy,” “Long as the Block Is Black” and many more. This limited-edition set is comprised of four CDs, a 24-page booklet with original artwork, a ten-panel digipack and a custom magnifying glass to view the back cover titles.

Guided By Voices

Cool Planet

GBV Inc

Conceived during the sub-freezing Polar Vortex of 2014, the next Guided By Voices record is Cool Planet.  It’s another wineskin full of great songs, recorded in a single proper studio for the first time since their inexhaustible reformation. There’s some unusually consistent and consistently awesome production on display, thanks to the array of vintage equipment on offer at Cyberteknics Creative Studios in Dayton, Ohio. Cool Planet also offers a weighty crunch that will lay you flat, perhaps due in part to the (re-)addition of late-version Guided By Voices tub-thumper Kevin March on drums.   Robert Pollard has talked in recent months about having refined his approach to songwriting (as if that was a thing that needed to happen) and the tunes he’s written for Cool Planet stack up against the best he’s ever done, including the hard-hitting title track, which just begs to be played live. Guitarist Tobin Sprout steps up with (among others) a Bowie-esque song (“Psychotic Crush”) and a Beatle-esque number (“All American Boy”). Look what Guided By Voices have done for the world since reforming in 2010. Six high-quality full-length albums in less than four years. And that’s not counting EPs, singles, tours, or solo records. If the sorry state of the present day indie-, alt- or just plain rock landscape is the disease, Guided By Voices is the cure! Do not take in moderation.

Guided By Voices

All American Boy / Eyesore Wives

GBV Inc

Limited to 1000 worldwide. All B-Sides are unreleased tracks with contributions from the rest of the band.

Guided By Voices

Authoritarian Zoo / Cool Planet Theme

GBV Inc

Limited to 1000 worldwide. All B-Sides are unreleased tracks with contributions from the rest of the band.

Guided By Voices

Males Of Wormwood Mars / A Year That Could Have Been Worse

GBV Inc

Limited to 1000 worldwide. All B-Sides are unreleased tracks with contributions from the rest of the band.

Guided By Voices

Table At Fool’s Tooth / Pillow Man

GBV Inc

Limited to 1000 worldwide. All B-Sides are unreleased tracks with contributions from the rest of the band.

Guided By Voices

Motivational Jumpsuit

GBV Inc

Motivational Jumpsuit is the latest, bestest release by reunited indie rock (whatever that means) juggernaut (means an unstoppable force) Guided By Voices. It speaks in several silvery tongues, and like last year’s English Little League takes many routes to the same shimmery, elusive destination: rock greatness. Its 20 songs (in 38 minutes!) range from the shaggy, Who Sell Out pop-pourri of “Evangeline Dandelion” to the lurching, rifferific “Planet Score,” breezing briskly through every worthwhile rock ’n’ roll style sheet along the way. Robert Pollard and co.’s influences are by now so thoroughly assimilated that Guided By voices referents are mostly to other Guided By Voices songs / eras: “Save the Company” calls to mind the band’s Bee Thousand / Alien Lanes lo-fi glory daze, while “Vote for Me Dummy” could be from Isolation Drills. For instance. Recent intramural turmoil aside (Guided By Voices has a long history of members quitting / getting fired / posting private correspondence online / waking up in the gutter), the band has never sounded more cohesive. Tobin Sprout’s insanely catchy feather-light confection “Record Level Love” bobs up against the deeply purple spray-paint rock of “I Am Columbus,” which pinballs into the elastic, sprightly “Difficult Outburst and Breakthrough”—the pacing and variety always seem to make some kind of higher sense, if only as an appeal to the senses. Motivational Jumpsuit is gangly, wordy, heavy, lovely, catchy, rocky, complexly simple, and better than almost any record you’ll hear this year. This is the fifth record (in three years) by...

Guided By Voices

Alex And The Omegas

GBV Inc

Guided By Voices

Planet Score

GBV Inc