Assholier Than Thou - www.assholierthanthou.com
Chris

Guided By Voices
Universal Truths and Cycles
Matador Records

I am back on board with Guided by Voices after a couple of year lay off.

It was not that I ever disliked Guided By Voices, it just seemed like nothing was as good as “Bee Thousand” and they put out too many records for me to get into any one of them before another came out like two days later. I have always liked Guided By Voices – that must be said. It is just that now I am again nominating them for Ohio’s Greatest Natural Resource and Number One Export.

It started when listener Mark brought in the last album, “Isolation Drills”. I got to listen to that record a bunch of times at work and I declared it good. And then I saw Guided By Voices a couple of times live and remembered how solid they were. And then this record, starting off with an old school GBV thirty second song, “Wire Greyhounds” and ending eighteen more songs later in like forty five minutes, is the mad bomb. I will never stop being amazed by Bob Pollard’s killer song writing and lyrics that you consistently can’t remember because they are pretty out there. And he has a good voice. With the added benefit of Doug Gillard’s tastefully rocking guitar solos and a band that sounds they actually play together outside of the basement (not that there is anything wrong with that but the current Guided By Voices line-up is the most actual band sounding of any of them).

One of the best things about Guided By Voices is that Bob Pollard really believes that he is the shit. I watched him the other day on The Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn playing “Everywhere with Hellicopter” (great song) and I could tell that he totally believes that he is the man when he is standing on stage. I love that. I want artists who believe in what they are doing and if you have ever seen Bob Pollard live or read an interview with the man, you know he does. I am glad for him because he is the dude.

This record is great – fucking great.