Let's Go Eat The Factory

Twice into the same river

Guided By Voices, repeatedly named the progenitors of contemporary indie-rock, was disbanded in 2004 at will of the founder Robert Pollard. An immense source of music ideas, he has since recorded several solo albums and done his best to make believe he was getting on without the number one ensemble of his life. Yet he gave up pretty quickly. In 2011, the American rocker not just restored Guided By Voices, but reassembled the classic lineup, the one that made the band’s best albums. Time was hard on the musicians, burdening them with gray hair, wrinkles and extra weight. Still, the music from Guided By Voices has refused to change, which the band’s listeners have the chance to check out today. The Ohio-based ensemble delivered a new studio work called Let’s Go Eat The Factory that is a stylistic clone of their glorious records Bee Thousand (1994), and Alien Lanes (1995); and nobody expected anything different.

Execution is the same

Robert Pollard is from the category of those musicians who stubbornly ignore standards and rules, and never choose to pay attention to what critics say. It is common knowledge that hi lyrics may be absurd as anything, but he seems to not care about it at all. Let’s Go Eat The Factory gives us a wide selection of examples thereof, but this is not the poetic diamonds people listen to Guided By Voices, do they? The band’s fresh long player is still a bit lower than its famous predecessors, but in places it does remind of them a great deal. The forty-minute track list includes twenty one item with many of them destined to go past your attention. However, the record is worth listening to not because of particular songs, but because of the specific easy-going and never minding atmosphere, Grownups are sometimes eager to return to the childhood times, but the Guided By Voices squad seem to have ever left this stage. Simplest chord progressions, extremely emotional, yet far from top professional, vocals, and deliberately lowered garage record quality form a mixture which on some conditions can be caked post-punk.

Album bound to be good

Of the great variety of the tracks on Let’s Go Eat The Factory, Waves is the one that stands out for both the duration (three minutes is really much for Guided By Voices) and content. With a slight psychedelic touch, it is executed by patterns of classic rock and runs contrary to another highlight piece, The Unsinkable Fats Domino, which boasts of a truly hit-like chorus. A powerful impression is also produced by ballad Spiderfighter with piano playing the leading part, which is a rarity for the ensemble. The rest of the list of Let’s Go Eat The Factory requires several listens to taste. The whole record is literally stuffed with melodies and rhythms, while the stylistics varies within a very wide range. In the meantime, for most big Guided By Voices fans the content of the band’s new album goes second after the very fact of the release. They will need as little as one quick listening to it to understand that the classic roster of Guided By Voices got together again for the first time in the last fifteen years for all the right reasons.