#tremblers and goggles by rank

[kickerofelves]

Lizard on the Red Brick Wall -- Guided By Voices

[sinceileftyoublog]

Guided By Voices & Kiwi jr Live Show Review: 6/1, Thalia Hall, Chicago

From left to right: Bobby Bare Jr., Mark Shue, Robert Pollard, Kevin March, & Doug Gillard of Guided By Voices

BY JORDAN MAINZER

Robert Pollard sure has a way of making audiences feeling special. No, I'm not just talking about giving them their money's worth with regular forty-plus-song sets. As Guided By Voices walked out to chants of "G-B-V!" on Saturday night at Thalia Hall--a chant the band itself invented in studio on Propeller opening track "Over the Neptune / Mesh Gear Fox"--Pollard let the crowd know that it was Chicago itself who were the very first to chant the band's initials back at them, on their tour for 1993's Vampire on Titus. Perhaps it was a plea to continue supporting the band as they continue to release records, often upwards of 3 per year. "We can't just rest on our laurels!" Pollard proclaimed upon introducing "Serene King", the first single from their upcoming album Strut of Kings, the band's 41st (!) record. And rest on their laurels they don't, as evidenced by the band's 40th anniversary celebration last fall, and, really, by every show they continue to play.

Gillard

The year's shows so far for Guided By Voices are opportunities for many fans, even diehards, to hear live for the first time the songs from the band's 40th album, last November's Nowhere to Go but Up, as well as those released so far from Strut of Kings. As has been the case with this current lineup since 2016, the new material is often the highlight of the set, the songs the band is most excited to play. On Saturday, swinging opener "The Race Is On, The King Is Dead" proved to be more raw than its sweeping string-laden studio version from Nowhere to Go. It stood out has having a more urgent live sound without flourishes and could become a setlist regular in that vein, like "The Rally Boys". Elsewhere, Pollard's vocals were more upfront in the mix on prog songs like "Jack of Legs" and "Song and Dance". And two of Nowhere to Go's highlights certainly showcased the band's dynamism: "How Did He Get Up There?", with its choppy riffs and syncopated verses, and "For the Home", Doug Gillard's introductory guitar prelude giving way into a mammoth rhythm riff from Bobby Bare Jr. and drums from Kevin March.

Pollard

Even at 66 years old and less than two years removed from a busted knee, Pollard's still on stage crushing Miller Lites, taking swigs from a bottle of Jose Cuervo (which he somehow passed to the crowd reaching over the Thalia Hall photo pit), and launching high-kicks. If the crowd shows enthusiasm on its own, pogoing during career hits like "Game of Pricks" and "I Am A Scientist", it seems like Pollard takes the effort to amp them up with his leg up in the air for newer songs like Welshpool Frillies cut "Romeo Surgeon". The rest of the band, too, finds ways to subtly shift tunes night by night. Gillard's riffs on Tremblers and Goggles by Rank song "Boomerang" were a bit more bluesy than I recall, while the end call and response between Pollard and Bare Jr. during Pollard solo cut "Love Is Stronger Than Witchcraft" was straight up soulful, emulating the studio version's vocal layers. GBV are also careful not to oversaturate their material. Pollard joked that this would be the last time we'd hear Surrender Your Poppy Field's slow-burning "Volcano"--it won't going to make the cut on subsequent tours--but only after playing "Planet Score", a Motivational Jumpsuit cut that has found its way back into the rotation 10 years later. So, you never know.

From left to right: Mike Walker, Jeremy Gaudet, Brian Murphy, & Brohan Moore of Kiwi jr

Opening again for GBV, just like last September, was Toronto indie rock band Kiwi jr, culling from their three very good records. I thought of their opening set as a victory lap of sorts, the band now 3 years into their record deal with Sub Pop, having opened for 90s indie rock royalty like GBV and The Lemonheads. Live, they're becoming increasingly crispy, with wonderfully chintzy sounding synths introducing "Unspeakable Things", drummer Brohan Moore providing an appropriately wavy rhythm on "Salary Man", the band seamlessly diving into a galloping breakdown during the middle of "Waiting in Line". Vocalist Jeremy Gaudet's annunciation is increasingly Malkmus-esque, breathing out the final syllables of a melisma or laughing a tossed-off line like "nothing to worry about" on "Guilty Party". Yet, what separates him is his acerbic wit, clear as day even over the band's jangle. "It might take another year / It might take a shot-gunned beer / It might take a rifled deer / Head shot, night vision, sex tapе, head shot / Turn it out," from dark closer "Night Vision", sounds unexpectedly anthemic when coming from Gaudet's deadpanned delivery. Oh, and best of all, Kiwi jr played two new songs, the melancholy "I Want To Live in a World Like Polly" and the impressive "Blowin' Up". The latter started Cars-esque and punky before sporting a mid-song hip-hop drum beat with a synth freakout. If Kiwi jr continues to take the GBV route and morphs into something more kinetic, I don't think anybody will complain.

Murphy

Gaudet

[dustedmagazine]

Guided by Voices — La La Land (GBV Inc.)

La La Land by Guided By Voices

Guided by Voices songs have never been as simple and accessible as they sound, but there’s no question that lately Robert Pollard has been taking them in more oblique directions. Brash, fuzzy guitar riffs collide with twining, folk-derived modal melodies, sure, just like always, but the song structures are more complicated and open-ended than you remember from Isolation Drills. There are multiple parts, there are eerie wordless vocals, there are stark, stabbing piano intervals that set up lush rock band anthems. The words follow twisting, self-referential paths, moving quickly from one surreal image to the next, and checking back on previous phrases with sudden internal rhymes. These are songs like Gaudi architecture, friendly and childlike at a glance, ungodly complicated underneath.

La La Land, GBV’s first (but probably not last) album of 2023, continues the proggish explorations you might have noticed in last year’s Tremblers and Goggles by Rank (from my review: “The first thing you notice about Tremblers and Goggles by Rank is that these are not the short, melodically charged, fuzzball bon bons you may have come to expect from Guided by Voices.”)

Then as now, a seasoned band makes these twists and turns possible, even enjoyable. The ensemble, which includes Doug Gillard, Bobby Bare Jr., Mark Shue and Kevin March is now on its 14th Guided by Voices record. They nail the curves and changeups so well that you only notice the complexity in retrospect. While it’s happening, it seems mostly like good rock music.

The words touch lightly on all manner of topics in a sunny sci-fi way. Mortality is, possibly, the subject of “Face Eraser” but so is creative evolution and the uneasy way it is received in lines like “Now that you’ve found just what you’re made of/you should stay down.” “Pockets” is about just what the title suggests, but also about all the things we hold and treasure—and a few that we maybe don’t. But Pollard’s lyrics are like puzzle pieces, holding elliptical bits of meaning that might change completely if they were arranged in another way.

Pollard’s genius is that he can make you sing along in the shower to words that you probably don’t understand. Who is the crypto woman? Who is the thermometer child? What exactly is Pollard saying about the last three years in a line from “Wild Kingdom” when he observes, “Not to vaccinate/but to baptize a new creation/the next mutation of you.” Never mind, it’s hitched to a graceful, curving line of melody and it resonates the way a Miro painting does, even if it doesn’t relate, exactly, to the world you see.

Jennifer Kelly

[radiomax]

Wednesday 1/25/23 6pm ET: Feature LP: Guides By Voices - La La Land (2023)

LA LA LAND Review by Fred Thomas CTSY AllMusic, Released January 20, 2023 Not many rock bands are still exploring new ideas after their 30th album, but Guided by Voices are not like many other bands. Though the lineup of GbV present on 2022’s prog rock-meets-power pop outing Tremblers and Goggles by Rank had only been together since 2017, the album was their 13th release in that short time, with…

[kedamono-dreams]

did some math on GBV's currently released studio albums: the shortest in terms of tracklist length is their most recent, Tremblers and Goggles With Rank, with 10 songs on it. their longest tracklist albums are August by Cake and Zeppelin Over China, both with 32 tracks. Alien Lanes (probably my personal favorite) is in second place with 28. the mean tracklist length is 15 songs on 9 albums, and the average tracklist length is 16.513... tracks with Tonics and Twisted Chasers's original length, and 16.648... tracks with the CD release. There are 592 tracks total, and they make up about 25.25% of Pollard's total ASCAP credited songwriting work.

[jazznoisehere]

Guided By Voices: Tremblers And Goggles By Rank (Guided By Voices Inc. 2022)

Cover Art by Robert Pollard.

[escafandrista-musical]

Guided by Voices presenta l'àlbum Tremblers and Goggles by Rank (2022)

Guided by Voices presenta l’àlbum Tremblers and Goggles by Rank (2022)

@_GuidedByVoices Gènere: #rockalternatiu #indierock #powerpop #songoftheday Guided by Voices, la prolífica banda de Robert Pollard, va posar en circulació nou àlbum el passat 1 de juliol. “Tremblers and Goggles de Rank” és una nova roca que rep l’impuls de Rockathon Records. Un disc que s’afegeix a d’altres llançaments de Pollard, en els seus diferents projectes paral·lels. Un 14è àlbum que…

[onlyexplorer]

Guided By Voices announces “Tremblers and Goggles By Rank”, their second album of 2022

Guided By Voices announces “Tremblers and Goggles By Rank”, their second album of 2022

Posted on May 03, 2022 The ever-prolific Guided By Voices released two albums last year and are set to hit that record early in 2022 with the announcement of Tremblers and glasses per rank. The band’s 36th studio effort will arrive on July 1 via frontman Robert Pollard’s Rockathon Records label. Following March Cathedral of the Crystal Sisters, Tremblers and glasses per rank presents the…

[sinceileftyoublog]

Square Roots 2022: 7/8-7/9

BY JORDAN MAINZER

In its first incarnation since the pandemic, Lincoln Square’s preeminent summer street festival, Square Roots, continued its penchant for expanding the average person’s definition of “roots” music. This year’s lineup, with the likes of Bob Mould and DEHD, made the case for punk being just as big of a part of America’s roots as any type of music, while still showcasing the best of the Midwest in folk and indie rock.

Ten years ago, the best reason to see Mould would be to hear a pitch-perfect mix of classic songs from Hüsker Dü, Sugar, and his perennially underrated solo career. But over the past six years, specifically, he’s been on a real heater. 2016′s Patch the Sky is potentially his best post-Workbook solo record, and unlike last time I saw him, Friday night, he played both “Voices in My Head” and “Black Confetti”, the former a nice change of tempo after a flurry of Hüsker Dü heavyweights like “Never Talking to You Again” and “Celebrated Summer”. 2019′s Sunshine Rock had its moments, and Mould burned through one of its unabashed highlights, the unintentionally Yeah Yeah Yeahs quoting title track. And as this will be the first year Mould will be able to fully tour his pummeling protest album, 2020′s Blue Hearts (Merge), it was the solo album from which he thankfully pulled the most. Bassist Jason Narducy offered soaring harmonies on “Siberian Butterfly” and screams on “Next Generation”, while “Forecast Of Rain” and “The Ocean” played the role of “Voices In My Head” in the set, a break before the flurry of madness.

Guided By Voices, meanwhile, are used to Mould’s challenge. They’ve released two of three planned albums in 2022, and both are some of the strongest with the Robert Pollard-Doug Gillard-Bobby Bare Jr.-Mark Shue-Kevin March lineup. Both Crystal Nuns Cathedral and Tremblers And Goggles By Rank (Guided by Voices Inc.) continue the band’s prog rock-inspired streak. A few songs on the former are bolstered by cello from Chris George, like the slow-lurching, yet mammoth “Eye City”. Saturday night, GBV played what I thought would be the most challenging of those to pull off life, “Climbing A Ramp”, which is almost entirely built on George’s strings. That said, Gillard, who rips solos with the best of them, carried the song to the end and right into his masterpiece “I Am A Tree”. I would have liked to have heard a song like “Re-Develop”, with its soaring vocals around acoustic-to-electric guitar lines, or “Never Mind The List”, a tune that has the potential to become a crowd shout-along for years to come. “Go inside, let us play / And I’ll always throw another list away,” sings Pollard on that one, perhaps referring to the band’s time-honored tradition of giving away their setlists at the end of shows.

Tremblers And Goggles By Rank, on the other hand, basks in the lyrical non-sequiturs that define GBV, returning from the rare moments of thematic clarity on Crystal Nuns Cathedral. As it’s the more recent of the two, the band played from it more than they did any album, even Bee Thousand or Alien Lanes. They led off the set with the choppy “Unproductive Funk”. “Boomerang” was the clanging respite between anthems “Tractor Rape Chain” and “The Best of Jill Hives”. Of the two The Who Sell Out-inspired tunes on Tremblers And Goggles By Rank, Pollard and company opted for the power pop of “Alex Bell” over the album’s pseudo title track. While “Alex Bell” is a name portmanteau of two of the co-founders of Big Star, its ambitious structure is certainly a far cry from the ear candy of Chilton and Chris Bell. I was perhaps most surprised to hear 6+-minute Tremblers closer “Who Wants To Go Hunting”, which makes use of pianos and timpani; Gillard at least triggered some noise for good measure.

The two bands that played before Guided By Voices on the festival’s main stage have been following formulas that work for them for years, kind of like GBV themselves (well, up until these past few years’ delving into prog rock). But instead of indie rock ditties, Chicago’s DEHD thrive with lovelorn surf punk and Minneapolis’ The Cactus Blossoms with languid country folk. The former recently released their fourth studio album and Fat Possum debut Blue Skies, produced by the band’s singer/guitarist Jason Balla and mixed and mastered by heavyweights Craig Silvey and Heba Kadry, respectively. Indeed, Blue Skies combines the ethos of previous records like Flower Of Devotion with more tools at the band’s disposal, from the personnel involved to access to more instruments. It’s their best record yet, but its success is more due to the band refining what they do to a science. “Run, baby run” and “Walk, baby walk” are calls that pervade two of the live highlights from the new album, bopping even more than “Dream Baby Dream”. The former comes from Blue Skies lead single “Bad Love”, which combines almost all of the things DEHD do well: Emily Kempf’s bellowing vocals, Balla’s twangy guitars, drummer Eric McGrady’s two-snare gallop. “Run, baby, run / Run from the bad love / New love baby, come on honey, gimme some,” is a paean to the optimism of summer crushes, tailor made for a festival set.

The Cactus Blossoms played greatly from their most recent album One Day (Walkie Talkie), whose best songs combine dark themes with breezy instrumentals. Despite the googly eyed choogle of a song like “Desperado” or the retro sway of “I’m Calling You”, the brother-led band isn’t all roses, and One Day exemplifies their complexity. Take a track like “Ballad of an Unknown”, soft psychedelia that’s actually a story about a vagrant suffering from society’s lack of care, the opposite of hippie idealism. On “Is It Over”, Jack Torrey and Page Burkum sing, “All washed up, you're bound to fall / Just waiting for the curtain call,” a sense of fatalism hovering above their pleasantries. Of course, listening to the band in a crowd of people drinking good beer is pleasant, not lost on The Cactus Blossoms. One Day’s “Everybody” was a surefire set highlight despite its absence of Jenny Lewis (who guests on the studio version). “Everybody tryin’ to do what’s right / Everybody stayin’ up all night / Everybody waitin’ for the light,” is a simple, but true sentiment, especially heartfelt delivered in unison with a buzzed crowd. And of course, You’re Dreaming centerpiece “Change Your Ways Or Die” is the best tick-tock chug this side of the late, great Walkmen.

Overall, Square Roots continues to be the best street festival of the summer thanks to its cohesive identity. I can’t wait to see what comes in 2023.

[dustedmagazine]

Guided by Voices—Tremblers and Goggles by Rank (GBV Inc.)

Tremblers And Goggles By Rank by Guided By Voices

The first thing you notice about Tremblers and Goggles by Rank is that these are not the short, melodically charged, fuzzball bon bons you may have come to expect from Guided by Voices. Indeed, these songs are more intricately structured than usual. They have multiple parts.  They extend beyond the two- or three-minute mark. While the sounds are familiar—raucous guitars, hard-knocking drums, infectious melodic turns—they run through unexpectedly complicated channels.

Robert Pollard evidently spent his pandemic studying the way straight-up rock bands like the Who extended their play time. “Alex Bell” is thus something like his “Quick One,” the mini-rock opera with multiple movements, unfolding at different tempos and temperatures over an unusually elongated five-plus minutes. It begins at a lope, a rain of eighth-note guitars framing the quintessential, curving GBV melody, the sort of meat-and-potatoes American psychedelia that Guided by Voices has been serving up since the early 1990s. That part lasts a couple of minutes, and if it were all there was, it would be straight-up-the-middle Pollard. But roughly mid-cut, there’s an instrumental break, guitars ratcheting up, vocals turning fanciful and twee, and then, just as you’re thinking, “okay, this is Syd Barrett-ish,” the song changes again, bringing in a full-throttled, arena-ready chorus.  

One reason Pollard can make these hairpin turns is the strength and tenure of his band, here again, as it has for a while, including Doug Gillard, Bobby Bare Jr., Mark Shue and Kevin March. They are remarkably tight and powerful, whether in the power-chord exploding psychedelia of the title track, the vamping strut of “Cartoon Fashion (Bongo Lake)” or the final cut, “Who Wants to Go Hunting,” which alternates between spare acoustics and Who-like anthemry. 

It's almost required to spend at least a couple of sentences of a Guided by Voices review acknowledging the fearsome productivity of Robert Pollard. But while it’s true that he made three albums last year and may make another three this year before he’s done, he’s not a factory. In Tremblers and Goggles by Rank, he’s pushing himself in unexpected directions, trying out new stuff and letting it work or not, as it will. It’s brave and reckless and mostly successful. What a joy to write about a GBV album that surprises you. 

Jennifer Kelly