Illustration from the cover of the Fort Wayne Bible College catalog, 1968
On Wednesday, shortly before R.E.M. announced their dissolution, another big (big to me, anyway) piece of music news surfaced. The classic lineup of Guided By Voices, fresh off their reunion tour, has recorded an album titled Let's Go Eat the Factory that will come out on New Year's Day of 2012 (with a second album set to be released later in the spring). As a huge Guided By Voices fan, this was great news, so I'm pretty pumped up about the whole thing right now. How excited am I? Here's a good test - let's put an obscure GBV outtake up against a song from one of my favorite 2010 releases to see which one sounds better to me!
I'll admit, though, that even though School of Seven Bells' Disconnect From Desire album was my fifth favorite album of last year, the track "Dust Devil" was never an album highlight for me. I like the jet-exhaust synth intro, but the melody never really has anywhere interesting to go and takes over six minutes getting there - decent for dancing to, but it's not the most compelling listening experience.
The Guided By Voices called "Dust Devil" is actually a pre-classic-lineup track, recorded around 1988 (it was slated at one point to appear on the aborted Learning to Hunt album of that year). The verse is built around a twiddly guitar riff and an inert vocal melody sung liltingly by Robert Pollard - this flat verse melody explodes into an anthemic chorus hook that sounds awesome in spite of some sloppy drumming. Right now, I could listen to this song on repeat for at least an hour. I think that this means my official level of excitement about new GBV LPs is "High".
Winner: GUIDED BY VOICES
"Dust Devil" by Guided By Voices
"Dust Devil" by School for Seven Bells
0 comments:
Post a Comment