It’s honest to imagine that Robert Pollard has by no means suffered from author’s block: that is the 14th album since he rebooted Guided By Voices for the second time in 2016. Remarkably, the standard management in that point has barely wavered, every document placing a subtly completely different stability between fragmentary powerpop takes on Pink Flag-era Wire and extra musically dense prog stylings.
Tremblers… falls very a lot into the latter camp, with an inclination for longer, extra discursive songs (nearer Who Wants to Go Hunting clocks in at an unprecedented six minutes), their unpredictable twists and turns interspersed with lyricasequituruiturs (“I put on my shirt out/ I need you to see my clown”) and a wealth of attractive hooks. Cartoon Vogue (Bongo Lake) is especially high quality, as is the early Who-inspired Goggles By Rank. Roosevelt’s Marching Band, nonetheless, plods unspectacularly and whereas Alex Bell doesn’t need for concepts (or false endings), not all of them are literally good. As an album, it by no means comes near Guided By Voices at their mid-90s peak; it isn’t even one of the best one by this incarnation of the band (that’s probably 2019’s Warp and Woof). However that is one more strong addition to some of the spectacular canons in US indie rock.