People Need Holes: A Quick Review Of The New Guided By Voices Album, It's Not Them. It Couldn't Be Them. It Is Them!

There's a moment during "People Need Holes", a song late in the proceedings on the new Guided By Voices album, It's Not Them. It Couldn't Be Them. It Is Them!, where a listener is forced to nearly re-evaluate everything comfortable about Guided By Voices. The cut, nearly as prog in spots as "The Bell Gets Out of The Way" is Bacharachian, reveals a band who are once again surprising after a long career of doing just that. This is more than power pop, clearly, even if some of this new record perplexes.

It's Not Them. It Couldn't Be Them. It Is Them! finds these players pursuing the most soaring compositions Robert Pollard's written in quite some time. If the big choruses are not always apparent, at least the run-ups to where they'd rest are uniformly invigorating. This is an album that's not as punchy as 2021's Earth Man Blues, nor as poppy as the summer's pseudonymous release as Cub Scout Bowling Pins. From opener "Spanish Coin" onwards it's clear that GBV are intent on expanding their attack, while incorporating new textures and flourishes, flamenco ones on this opener.

I shouldn't make it sound like things are radically different here; "Dance of the Gurus" rocks with legitimate power, as does "High in the Rain", the teaser single. It's Not Them. It Couldn't Be Them. It Is Them! is refreshing in the way risks are taken, while being blended into the overall presentation. Things are rarely derailed, with down-tempo rambles, like "Flying Without a License", to use one example, maintaining enough of a GBV style to sound familiar, even if the band seems eager to shatter a fan's preconditions (in spots) of what this group's meant to sound like. But that's the charm this time, the spry dashes from the rollicking "I Wanna Monkey" to the detours in the complexity of the previously-mentioned "People Need Holes", a real gem. Pollard and Co. are crawling out of one hole and into another, finding a kind of warmth and safety within the confines they've made for themselves. This is genre-rock, in a way, with Pollard re-shaping the form over and over again. This time, on It's Not Them. It Couldn't Be Them. It Is Them!, he's the leader of a tight unit who sound intent on adding moods and meanings to the GBV vibe that we haven't heard much before. In that sense, this is a winner of a record.

It's Not Them. It Couldn't Be Them. It Is Them! is out on Friday via Rockathon Records.

More details via GuidedByVoices.com.

[Photo: Tell All Your Friends PR]