Motivational Jumpsuit
18 February 2014
Guided by Voices Inc.
“The last recording nearly killed me!” Robert Pollard sings
on “Writer’s Bloc (Psycho All the Time).” I assume this happens to him
frequently, as Guided by Voices releases a new album every few weeks (or so it
seems). Motivational Jumpsuit is
GBV’s twentieth studio LP. Add to this Pollard’s twenty solo LPs, and… Well, to
put things in perspective, MV is the ninth of these LPs to be released in the
last twenty-six months. That’s fucking N-I-N-E. Seven plus two. Since December
of 2011. Dude writes more songs before he eats breakfast in the morning than
the rest of us write in a year. I mean all of the rest of us combined.
The music: still those trademark one-minute indie rock
songs, those quirky lyrics, that lo-fi aesthetic, those garage rock guitars,
and that complete disinterest in conforming to what the music industry wants. As
there are twenty songs on this album, with little stylistic variation between
them, I will treat the album as one forty-seven-minute long song. My favourite
parts of the song are called “A Bird with No Name,” “Littlest League Possible,”
and “Bulletin Borders.” As usual, Pollard’s lyrics are abstract and
disconnected, making his emotional delivery of them somewhat disorienting.
Disorienting is generally a good thing for an album to be, and this one is no
exception.
As an album in and of itself, Motivational Jumpsuit is a good platter of interesting little
ditties. As the ninth album Pollard has written in two years (with a tenth, Cool Planet, to follow in a few short
months!), MV both benefits and
suffers from the deluge of new material. It’s a distinct challenge to keep all
of the songs distinct in one’s head.
Indeed, how to keep all the different albums apart in one’s head is a challenge
even. Though the mere fact that Pollard can pack twenty songs onto an LP
without a single one of them being a misstep is impressive indeed.
reviewed by Richard Krueger
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