Thursday, November 16, 2017

Albums of the Year # 40 Guided by Voices - How Do You Spell Heaven?

What I wrote about this one back in August:


'How Do You Spell Heaven the new record by Guided By Voices, is essentially business as usual. Fabulous, fridge magnet song titles, meaty, effortless guitar riffs, abstruse, wordy lyrics, inspired leftfield pop. We shouldn't really be surprised, they've been doing this for well over thirty years now.



In some ways they still sound like the missing lyric between Document era R.E.M. and Bob Mould, although there's always plenty of late sixties The Who, (perhaps leader Robert Pollard's most important formative influence), thrown into the mix. Anyhow, with songs called things like The Birthday Democrats, Steppenwolf Mausoleum, Diver Dan and Tenth Century and all the Prog/ Punk sloganeering, ('sociopathological liars invented the wheel'),  they're clearly having all the fun you could possibly hope for people still doing this at their point in life. A cursory listen will tell you they have every right. Amazingly, it all comes across as effortless, an act of  still impeccably fertile imagination and taste for adventure which is high tribute to them. An American institution!


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