Guided By Voices - Let's Go Eat The Factory

There's a good handful of us that are ultra-excited like a large-hearted boy to hear some new GBV. Sure, maybe most of it amounts to little more than another Bob Pollard solo record, but he's generally been good in the past about keeping his more avant garde experiments for side projects and keeping the truer-to-form rock for the New Who. And GBV have, even with that, still been a little hit and miss at times. I mean, when you put 24 songs on a record, each listener is simply not going to connect with each one. The new one's not so different. Already seeing some great song titles. So, how does it sound?

Well, it did take me to track five before I connected with anything. And it just so happens that the song, "Hang Mr. Kite" is the most un-GBV like song in their catalog. Short, but orchestrated with a string ensemble, it resembles REM more than anything else. Departure that works? Check. This is toyed with again in side two as "Old Bones" takes an organ-synth sound with vocal echo to make a Auld Lang Syne rip-off that applies to anyone who's youth has passed them.

A couple more quality tracks, "God Loves Us" and the single "The Unsinkable Fats Domino" pass by until what is probably the weakest track on the album comes across. The psychedelic dream-pop Nico-throwaway "Who Invented The Sun" surely won't be on anyone's top 10 lists. GBV continue this psychedelic scene with a few more that aren't half bad. The slow-Hendrixy blues of "The Big Hat and Toy Show" and thunderpussy "Imperial Racehorsing".

"How I Met My Mother", "Waves". These are worthy of classic GBV groupings, but I'm finding myself more in love with the oddly experimental tracks. "Either Nelson" is driven by a piano riff, but clearly either by post-production delays or by perfectly sloppy jamming, everyone is half-a beat off from each other. A mess of noise that drives the album better than the more straightforward rock tracks.

I wouldn't call this return "stellar" by any means. But it's a quality album with just as many memorable tracks that you'd find on Isolation Drills. (3.5 of 5 stars)