Guided by Voices - Cool Planet

Guided by Voices
Cool Planet
13 May 2014
Guided by Voices Inc.

2.5 stars out of 5

 

GBV fans be warned: there’s a song on Cool Planet that is more than three minutes long. You might have to double your dose of Ritalin in order to concentrate long enough for that one. Coming less than three months after their previous LP, Motivational Jumpsuit, the latest from Robert Pollard & Co. doesn’t quite hit the mark. The songs here sound tired and derivative, as if Pollard is parodying himself. Still, a self-parodying Pollard is preferable to the pure persona of many another performer.

By his own confession, Pollard has developed a formula for writing songs, which perhaps accounts for the staleness of the material here; however, since this is his third full-length in less than six months, perhaps what is needed most is some self-editing. If you took the best five or six tracks from each of Blazing Gentlemen, Motivational Jumpsuit, and Cool Planet and threw them together you’d have a pretty solid LP. In literature, one of the dangers of self-publishing is the lack of attention paid to editing, which isn’t so much an ego thing as it is a lack of understanding of why a second or third perspective is important. The same goes for music.

The closing track here, which is also the title track of the LP, displays the kind of songwriting genius Pollard possesses. With one or two other exceptions, the remainder of the LP doesn’t display much else of interest. For long-time fans, you’ll have another pretty piece of vinyl to add to your shelves, but for everyone else your time and money is better spent elsewhere.

reviewed by Richard Krueger

Guided by Voices - Motivational Jumpsuit

Guided by Voices
Motivational Jumpsuit
18 February 2014
Guided by Voices Inc.

3.5 stars out of 5

 

 

“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