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Guided By Voices: The Bears for Lunch

Guided By Voices

If anyone could crack the rock-and-roll genome—unlocking the secrets to replicating the music in its endless variety—then it would be Robert Pollard of Guided By Voices. (Give that man a MacArthur Genius grant!) For a quarter-century, Pollard and his bandmates have been churning out lo-fi gems—some that harken back to chamber pop, some that spit and snarl like a garage-band monstrosity, some that beguile with inscrutable psychedelic mysteries. A bit of Small Faces here, a bit of the Left Banke there. The protean GBV have released more than 30 studio albums,
EPs and box sets. This was their third record of 2012. Pollard released two albums that same year.) A band this maniacally prolific is sometimes wobbly. But this is Golden Era GBV. Anyway, they’ve always excelled at ultra-brief sketches, the kind of nuggets that most bands would polish and elaborate on. “Waving At Aeroplanes” and “The Corners Are Glowing” would be at home on Bee Thousand or Alien Lanes.