Beat Magazine review of Isolation Drills

Beat Magazine
June 2001
Ben Pollock

Guided By Voices
Isolation Drills
TVT Records/Festival Mushroom

I guess it’s official. Guided By Voices have finally found themselves a home within expensive production values. Spending the good part of 15 years releasing album after EP of lo-fi, 4 and 8 track recordings, many of us could be forgiven for either thinking it would never happen or even feeling a little sceptical about the motivations for GBV finally entering the ‘big league’. Is age beginning to fuel the fires of retirement within the GBV camp? In which case, a final few ‘big bucks, big cash’ releases would indeed assist in widening the good old relaxation fund. Well some of the more cynical (or possibly miserable) of you might like to believe this is the case. However, it simply seems more of a natural progression for the group, and who could blame them? After over 10 years of limiting oneself to no more than 8 tracks of recording to experiment with, anyone would be pretty keen to get themselves into a shiny new studio of rocket launching capabilities (well, in comparison with an 8-track anyway).

Put simply, GBV’s beginnings as the worlds premier lo-fi rock act began due to a basic lack of recording equipment. The fact that even though something recorded so modestly could become so popular gave GBV a running start, and after years of producing recordings that people loved regardless of production qualities could prove to be quite a difficult process to shake. Despite sporadic production values, the one thing that has remained a constant within GBV is superlative song writing abilities, of which their second big budget release, Isolation Drills, is absolutely saturated with. Initially, for those of you solely familiar with GBV’s more sonically-challenged efforts, there may be an air of discomfort with Isolation Drills. For a group whose writing and performing genius far out-weighed the lo-fi medium it had previously been recorded on, these qualities are now presented in full-on quadro-stereo-hydro-bio-phonic, damn decent budget production (at least in comparison with earlier efforts). But please relax if this frightens you, the songs are very much still there and perhaps stronger than ever.

For what some have argued as their strongest album in recent years, GBV leave no track on Isolation Drills unstained by that pop-rock magic that they do. From the open chords and sliding bass lines in set opener Fair Touching leading into the chorus serenade of "But a queens prize awaits, she might rub her legs", you just know you’re in for rock bliss. Just put on any track at random and you’ll find yourself entranced with a hook, a chorus, a lyric or any number of combinations they seem to have limitless stock of. Go ahead, I challenge you to listen to tracks like Pivotal Film, The Enemy or Sister I Need Wine and not enjoy them until your ears turn into the delectable candy-like meal Guided by Voices have been feeding them.