On their many, many albums,
Guided by Voices
have taken various different inroads to rock & roll over the years. During their lo-fi beginnings, the band often looked to
Beatles
-inspired melody and post-punk weirdness, and on the nonstop stream of output that's poured out since their 2012 reunion, they have ventured into dense prog rock or more conceptual songwriting.
Universe Room
, the group's 41st studio album, lands somewhere different not just song by song, but minute by minute. Bandleader
Bob Pollard
designed the record to not have too many repeating parts, traditional choruses, or typical arrangement choices. This approach sets up an album of curveballs, where listener expectations are unwound at every turn.
"Fly Religion" starts out with a chunky, pulsating riff played by the entire band, suggesting classic hard rock tension-building that will eventually erupt into a big chorus that brings the song resolution. Instead, the track touches briefly on some alt-rock segments, winds through dissonance, and eventually dissolves into a cloud of meandering guitar noodling. "Independent Animal" kicks off like a classic
GbV
melancholic power pop tune, but instead of delivering the usual verse/chorus/verse, the song changes keys several times within its verse, gets into an intricate instrumental section, and then simply stops, all of this happening in just over one minute. "Aesop Dreamed of Lions" reaches out in every direction, with yearning melodic verses transitioning into segments of sauntering rock, uplifting orchestral moments complete with strings and sleigh bells, and some flashy guitar leads to tie everything up as nicely as possible. One minute
are tearing through their time-honored bar-band-from-Jupiter-styled rock tunes, and then they abruptly turn to flamenco guitars and
Morricone
-informed percussion flourishes.
approaches production in the same unpredictable manner as the songwriting. Alongside huge-sounding studio recordings are more low-fidelity tunes like the exceptionally scrappy instrumental "The Well Known Soldier," which records a broken acoustic guitar on what sounds like a handheld cassette recorder. "Clearly Aware" is a loud rocker, but it captures the entire band with a single microphone, creating a mix where the sounds bleed together into one bulky singular force. The multiple shifts aren't dissimilar to the experimentation found on early
albums. It results in a wildly mixed bag where the listener has to actively engage to keep up, and the constant unexpected gear shifting makes for one of the more fun and happily confounding
sets of their post-reunion output. ~ Fred Thomas