The opening, title, track is classic Guided By Voices, a whirr of noise, ringing one note guitars, a couple of gnomic lines from Bob and into a lurching upbeat riff. Rough and ready yet effortlessly melodic. You can tell they were happy with it because they repeat the basic pattern and amend a lengthy coda taking it past the four minute mark. Standard practice for most bands but GBV more usually race through the ideas once and wrap up in under two minutes. Always a lightness of touch, even this far into their career they’re neatly sidestepping middle aged bloat. Insert your own treadmill metaphor. Unfortunate perhaps to be releasing a record called Space Gun as the toddler in chief decides he might need a ‘space force’ – possibly having misunderstood the term illegal aliens, it’s hard to say. Not that we should worry, Guided By Voices are at a remove from the everyday. Made out of it perhaps but torn up and pushed through the restless filter of main man Robert Pollard’s imagination.
Space Gun is the 26th studio album under the GBV name and, in a unusual nod to restraint, apparently the only one set for 2018. Pollard has released almost as many solo records and that, alongside the numerous other projects (Circus Devils, Boston Spaceships, Ricked Wicky etc) apparently took him past the 100 hundred albums marker last year. Who the hell has time for all that? He says the songs just come to him. It’s no wonder they’re always there, like the weather. The last time I paid attention was 2014’s Motivational Jumpsuit, four years and four albums ago. Anecdotally, I hear the follow up Cool Planet was pretty terrible and they split up again for a couple of years. I’ve only just heard about that. They basically squeezed a whole other band’s career in the short gap between me paying attention, in the time some bands take between making albums.
Listening to a new Guided By Voices album is like taking an occasional aimless wander through the streets near your home that you rarely walk down or only hurry past. It’s comfortably familiar but dense with odd details and small changes you don’t usually notice. If you’re entirely new to them imagine some notional midpoint between R.E.M. and The Fall, a chance meeting on a college radio turntable. Classic rock moves broken into junk collages, great harmonies, word blizzards and drunken bloody mindedness, a relentless output and an ever shifting line up. This time out ‘Ark Technician’ is particularly early R.E.M-like, almost like a lost outtake from Reckoning. Later there’s a strong feel of The Flaming Lips in the strings, synths and chorus of ‘That’s Good’, but from a few years back when the Lips still wrote decent songs. Mostly though, they sound just like themselves. Liar’s Box has one of their sweet, late flowering choruses and will have you singing “Summons of a glass, To a sad, sad heaven” as if you know or care what it means. ‘Blink Blank’ is a pop moment that opens with the wonderful “Lighthouse black, coffee can blue/ I lost an umbrella searching for you/ In the shitstorm” and apparently casts an eye around the state of the world. Elsewhere there’s ‘I Love Kangaroos’ a pleasant stroll you could play your kids without too much ‘what is this dad-rock rubbish?’ resistance, although they might go for ‘Flight Advantage’s declamatory cry “Spiders Will Dance!” as well.
Not so long ago, for reasons I can no longer recall or explain, I stumbled onto an internet forum dedicated to the meticulous examination and discussion of Guided By Voices many, many works. Of course such a thing exists, I was shocked at myself for never having considered it, but I backed away all the same. What I’m saying here is, if you want the life sucked out of this record and a testy argument about its appropriate ranking within their extensive canon then there are places you can go for that. For the less devoted among us I’d put this one towards the better end of the scale using the following unscientific assessment. 14 years ago, when they first split, I remember purchasing their ‘final’ album Half Smiles Of The Decomposed. They lasted seven or eight years away that time and came back roaring. Half Smiles… is a good record, not one of their imperial phase 90’s run but one I know well and love. Earlier I played them back to back and Space Gun could easily have been its follow up record. It’s as good, the songs are great and they complement each other well. Other comparisons are available. There’s two ways to look at that of course because essentially they’ve not developed, progressed or changed much in that time and it might be nice if they had. On the other hand, consider some of the other bands touring their old 90’s hits and lack lustre new material wearily around and Space Gun begins to seem more remarkable. There’s not many of them sounded this charged and alive on their 6th, nevermind their 26th album, we should probably not take them for granted.
