It’s no longer enough to describe Robert Pollard as prolific; since founding Guided By Voices in the early ‘80s, he’s been involved in the making of one hundred albums, which he celebrated earlier this year with the release of GBV’s first double-length opus, August by Cake, featuring 32 mostly lo-fi nuggets of garage-rock wisdom. So while everyone can agree that he’s written a ton of music, the juicier question then becomes: How can we tell when he’s changed direction? That’s where How Do You Spell Heaven comes in. After spending most of 2016 whipping the current GBV lineup into road-ready shape, Pollard serves up a hefty slate of carefully crafted songs that propel him out of his comfort zone, dipping into Syd-like psychedelia (“The Birthday Democrats”), Bolan-esque glam (“Pearly Gates Smoke Machine”) and even radio-bound dad-rock (“Just to Show You”), with nary a whiff of his hardscrabble indie roots. You can hear The Who, for example, in the thick melodic breaks of “Diver Dan,” while on “How to Murder a Man,” he taps a sarcastic streak that’s darker than usual, murmuring the line “Sociopathological liars invented the wheel in which they run in scholarly circles” with a pointedly creepy detachment that recalls Nick Cave or David Bowie. The band also switches moods and tempos with seamless ease; they flip the quiet acoustic intro section of “King 007” into upbeat, power-chorded bliss, and ride “Steppenwolf Mausoleum” in a mounting wave of guitars and backing vocals. As rare as it is for Pollard to sound this polished, it’s clear that he’s always had it in him.