Guided By Voices have reached a point where the band has made so much great music, at such a fantastic clip, that any deviation from the pure path is bound to raise eyebrows. Such is the case with lots of what's on Sweating The Plague, the vaguely progressive new album, their third in 2019. Robert Pollard and his crew on this release, out on Friday via Rockathon Records, are making a more expansive form of what they've done all along, even though the album is only 37 minutes long. And while that brevity is a familiar thing, there are bits and pieces here of experimentation that suggest that GBV are ready to mess with the GBV template a bit.
If some of Sweating the Plague feels familiar, like the bright and shiny "Street Party", there's other stuff here, like "Mother's Milk Elementary", that ventures into really odd territory. Full of awkward chord changes, shifts in time signatures, and a hook that's brought in sideways on a stretcher, the cut is like a dissection of the entire GBV method. Elsewhere, "Heavy Like The World" rocks like the best numbers on Warp and Woof from earlier this year, while "Unfun Glitz" and "Ego Central High" lumber like the heavier selections on Zeppelin Over China from even earlier this year.
Look, Guided By Voices have earned the right to venture out of their comfort-zone a bit, so a listener should enjoy "Your Cricket is Rather Unique" for what it is, rather than compare it to earlier, tighter things from this band. Similarly, "Tiger on Top" doesn't entirely work but at least it's different than lots of what Robert Pollard and his team have done lately. A far more successful number here on Sweating The Plague is "The Very Second", a charging track that roars more or less like offerings from Alien Lanes so many decades ago. Still, what's to be applauded here is stuff like "Sons of the Beard", a keyboard-anchored tune that's surely going to be the closest Guided By Voices ever get to Emerson, Lake, and Palmer.
Sweating The Plague is out on Friday via Rockathon Records.
More details Guided By Voices via the band's official website, or via the official GBV Facebook page.
[Photo: Guided By Voices / Rockathon Records]