#726 Guided by Voices - Earthquake Glue

After the peerless Bee Thousand and the solid Alien Lanes, I'd heard enough consensus that Guided By Voices had gone downhill that I'd never heard another note of Robert Pollard's impossibly prolific output. Word is that their recent string of three comeback albums is actually pretty solid though, which rekindled my interest in the band, which lead me to listen to this, which I thought was one of those three, but is actually from 2003? God these guys are and are not prolific, in turn, who can keep track. I haven't listened to anything they've recorded in about 20 years, so it's all new to me. This, whenever it was recorded, met but did no exceed my modest expectations.

On an album thick with big riffs and no small love for 90's style big-chord riffage, Pollard's best weapon is still his voice. It remains rich with nuance and able to wobble onto and off of chords, quiver onto and off of notes, drawing lines taught and letting them bounce back into place with palpable relief, rendering songs like Useless Inventions and The Best of Jill Hives thrilling with euphoric melodic release. On the best songs perfectly chosen chords provide a solid foundation for the soaring vocal arches that makes GBV so exciting.

Of course, there's none of that boundless, effortless, ex nihilo songsmithing that Bee Thousand was built on. That can never be recaptured, and this is decidedly just an album of regular songs written and recorded by a man, not the shards of some sonic virgin birth. And as an album, its unevenly paced, patchy in quality, and not altogether inventive in any particular way. But it is strangely listenable, stirring up moments of pop beauty often enough that it's probably worth your trouble 3/5