GUIDED BY VOICES Let’s Go Eat The Factory

*IN-STORES TUESDAY JAN 17, 2012

GUIDED BY VOICES
Let’s Go Eat The Factory
www.gbv.com
Dist: F.A.B.

After a 15 year hiatus, the “classic lineup” of GUIDED BY VOICES (Robert Pollard, Tobin Sprout, Mitch Mitchell, Greg Demos and Kevin Fennell) finishes off its year-long reunion tour by releasing an album of 21 new songs, deliberately choosing to return to what bandleader Pollard calls the “semi-collegial” approach of iconic GBV albums like ‘Bee Thousand’ and ‘Alien Lanes’. ‘Let’s Go Eat The Factory’ is much more than a mere return, however: sprawling, variegated, heavy, melodic, and yet still recognizably and coherently Guided By Voices in both its literal and mythic senses. Eschewing the recording studio, ‘Let’s Go Eat The Factory’ was instead manufactured in the living rooms, basements and garages of various longtime band members. Band members occasionally switched instruments, and Pollard gladly accepted input from other band members. Sprout wrote or co-wrote and sings on six of the 21 songs. The aesthetic is very much GBV, but in some unexpected ways (more prevalent use of keyboards and samples, for one thing) the 21st century can’t help but poke its nose into the resulting music.