Guided By Voices "Mirrored Aztec"
Robert Pollard has released so many albums at this point, it is impossible to keep up. I am certainly guilty of missing some of the most recent ones, or only giving them one cursory listen before forgetting about them. It's not that they are bad; far from it. It's just the bar that Pollard has set throughout his career is so incredibly high that it's unreasonable to expect him to maintain that level with this amount of output. 107 albums? Thousand + songs? And this is his fifth album is less than two years.
And yet here we are, in 2020, during a pandemic, and Pollard and Co have managed to release Mirrored Aztec a Guided by Voices album that-I'm just going to say it--rivals their stellar 90's output. I'm serious.
Not only is the album cover fantastic, this might be one of their albums that has the least amount of filler and the most amount of surprises. And this is coming from a band known for 40 second throw-away songs (often some of the best material on their albums) and stress off-kilter as a way of life.
"I think I had it. I think I have it again," is a great opener. "Citizen's Blitz," "Lip Curlers," and song after bloody song sound so good. Much like the Under the Bushes nod, "Please Don't Be Honest," has to be a deliberate nod to one of their more recent albums called Please Be Honest.
The biggest surprise is how much it sounds like the Under The Bushes Under The Stars/Mag Earwhig! era where the band's lineup turned over and went from jangly arpeggios to more crunchy guitars that bite back. Certainly this has a lot to do with Doug Gillard who returned to the fold. An early track even playfully referenced the UTBUTS album title in its lyrics.
I don't know if Pollard is leaving Easter eggs for the die-hards, or looking back, or just looking through his notebooks for the right vibe. It's always fun guessing.
And yet just when you think the album is only about looking back, there are curveballs aplenty. "Math Rock," which is at the moment my favorite track on the album, has a children's chorus on it. It's delightfully weird and trippy.
Pollard's voice is in fine shape throughout and the lineup of Pollard, Gillard, Bobby Bare Jr, Kevin March and Mark Shue are tighter than ever. I don't mean to keep comparing this to the current times, as I'm sure it was recorded well before anyone had heard of Wuhan, but it really is how amazingly fresh, revitalized and for lack of a better word, healthy it sounds.
Pollard has always been a master sequencer, but "Mirrored Aztec" feels especially thought out. "Thank you Jane," "The best foot forwards," and "Party rages on," is a nice trifecta closer. One does get the sense that in Pollard's house, the Club is (still) open and the beer is still flowing, even if they can't get to the local venue, or the dive bar/restaurant.
At eighteen songs, the album is filled with tight jams, power pop songs under three minutes and never outstays its welcome. And it couldn't have come at a better moment.
Buy it via Rockthon here
Amazon here