One For The Weekend: Guided By Voices

Check out "(You Can't Go Back To) Oxford, Talawanda" off GBV's new album Thick Rich and Delicious out October 31.

Visit the official Guided By Voices merch site for all your "Thick Rich and Delicious" swag needs right here.

Guided By Voices preview Universe Room album with "The Great Man"

Hmm... I wonder who "The Great Man" could be about? It's off GBV's forthcoming album Universe Room out February 7th. 

GBV marks 30 years of Bee Thousand with new version of "I Am A Scientist"

Check out Robert Pollard's updated version of the GBV gem "I Am A Scientist" originally recorded for 1994's Bee Thousand LP.

Guided By Voices' new Strut of Kings album out today – check out "Serene King"

You can get a copy of GBVs' Strut of Kings via your platform of choice right here. Watch 'em perform "Serene King" in Pittsburgh.

GBV previews new Strut of Kings album with "Cavemen Running Naked"

Guided By Voices' "Strut of Kings" album is out June 28th which you can pre-order here. Check out "Cavemen Running Naked" 

Happy Birthday Robert Pollard!

Celebrating Robert Pollard's birthday with a new GBV tune, songs from a show in 2019 along with some vintage footage.  

You can pre-order GBV's soon-to-be-released 39th album Nowhere To Go But Up – their 3rd for 2023! – right here. 

Bob Pollard previews new Circus Devils album with nutty "Here We Are" clip

The new Circus Devils album, Squeeze The Needle, is out October 27th via GBV Inc. Check out "Here We Are" below.

One For The Weekend: Tobin Sprout

Watch the video for the remastered version of Tobin Sprout's "Small Parade" off Demos and Outtakes 2 double LP available here.

Guided By Voices, Weird Nightmare @ Buffalo's Iron Works, August 4

Might be time for a road trip to Buffalo for GBV's show at the Iron Works (49 Illinois St) on Friday, August 4. Info here.

For those who haven't been keeping up, Stuart Berman presents the best of Guided By Voices since 2012 right here. 

GBV share "Excited Ones" from next album, Crystal Nuns Cathedral

"Excited Ones" is off Guided By Voices' new album Crystal Nuns Cathedral – their 35th! – out March 4th. 

Here's the scoop...

Guided By Voices have always played by their own rules and they’ve kept extraordinarily busy during the pandemic. Three albums in 2020 and two albums in 2021 garnered amazing press, and they’re now selling out shows everywhere. But the new album Crystal Nuns Cathedral tops them all! 

The mighty Guided by Voices are set to unleash upon the world their 35th and quite possibly…BEST album, Crystal Nuns Cathedral, on March 4, 2022. How do they do it you might ask? Well, we don’t know how they do it, but we certainly do know WHY they do it. They do it because quite honestly we NEED them to do it. The world needs The Rock, and we need loud guitars, we need anthemic songs, we need a reason to raise a rock fist in the air and give a “Hell Yeah!" On Crystal Nuns Cathedral, the band delivers all of this and so much more.

Just four months since It’s Not Them. It Couldn’t Be Them. It Is Them!, comes Crystal Nuns Cathedral, twelve songs determined to challenge for the title of greatest Guided by Voices album of all-time. Hyperbole you say? Not this time. The guitars are bigger, the arrangements are more ambitious, the songs are uplifting, epic, and as incredibly hook laden as always!

Pure power pop perfection like lead single "Excited Ones" mix perfectly with the slow burning "Climbing a Ramp" which reaches its climax on a stunning guitar lead before dissolving into the fist pumping anthem "Never Mind the List," which serves as the beating heart of the entire album. Do you still need convincing? Listen to the one-two punch of "Forced to Sea" and "Huddled" and marvel at the epic scope and vision of an incredible band on full display.

This record is a statement, a challenge, a monument, a call to arms. Top this one if you can, this is the new benchmark. Who will best it? Who will try? Listen to Crystal Nuns Cathedral, and report back to us. 

You can pre-order GBV's Crystal Nuns Cathedral via Rockathon Records right here. Check out "Exicited Ones" followed by a 1996 show at Amsterdam's venerable Melkweg you may have missed.  

One For The Weekend: Guided By Voices

GBV's "Dance of Gurus" is off their new album It's Not Them. It Couldn't Be Them. It Is Them! out today. 

Here's the scoop...

It's been just a few months since GBV's faux rock opera Earth Man Blues garnered 4-star and 5-star reviews, with Rolling Stone proclaiming that the album "may be their best in decades" and it "squarely hits all the marks that make Guided by Voices great—again and again and again.”

"Again and again and again" is perhaps GBV's credo, with Robert Pollard’s never-ending supply of fascinating and supremely catchy rock. Just when you think you've got them pinned down, album number 34 opens with bizarre percussion, mariachi trumpets, strings and acoustic guitar. The adventurous spirit pervades yet another killer album from the greatest and most versatile GBV line-up. The golden boys can do no wrong.  

Hooky singles "My (Limited) Engagement," "High In The Rain," and "Dance of Gurus" – check the video below – intermingle with occasionally dark lyrics and the oddest of GBV oddballs, the ridiculous "Razor Bug," "Psycho House," and the "Maintenance Man Of The Haunted House." The horns and strings return intermittently, with "The Bells Get Out Of The Way" going full Burt Bacharach. It's Not Them is a creative tour-de-force full of surprises from the most prolific and captivating rock band on the planet. 

You can order GBV's It's Not Them. It Couldn't Be Them. It Is Them! directly from Rockathon Records right here.  Check out GBV's upcoming tour dates with includes a Toronto stop at the Phoenix on December 17th following Aaron Dunkel's ace video for "Dance of Gurus" with photography by Michael Nigro. 

GUIDED BY VOICES 2021 TOUR

Fri, Oct 22 - Ottobar - Baltimore, MD SOLD OUT!

Sat, Oct 23 - College Street Music Hall - New Haven, CT

Fri, Nov 12 - Thalia Hall - Chicago, IL SOLD OUT!

Sat, Nov 13 - Beachland Ballroom - Cleveland, OH SOLD OUT!

Fri, Dec 17 - Phoenix Concert Theatre- Toronto, ONT

Sat, Dec 18 - Mr. Smalls - Pittsburgh, PA

Fri, Dec 31 - Brooklyn Made - Brooklyn, NY

Fri, Jan 14 - Irving Plaza - New York, NY

Sat, Jan 15 - Royale.-  Boston

*** NOTE: Boston will be an early show! 6pm doors, 7pm-9:30pm on stage

Fri, March 18 - Majestic Theatre - Madison, WI

Sat, March 19 - Fine Line - Minneapolis, MN

Sat, March 26 - Neumos - Seattle, WA

Sun, March 27 - Revolution Hall - Portland, OR

Tue, March 29 - Great American Music Hall - San Francisco, CA

Wed, March 30 - The Catalyst - Santa Cruz, CA

Fri, April 1 - Teragram Ballroom - Los Angeles, CA

Sat, April 2 - Pappy & Harriets - Pioneertown, CA

90s Nostalgia: GBV's Bee Thousand

Since Bee Thousand's songs were taken directly from Robert Pollard's 4-track demos, it made the mastering a challenge.

Bob Pollard presents new GBV sideproject Cub Scout Bowling Pins

Check out three tracks from Cub Scout Bowling Pins' forthcoming album Clang Clang Ho due July 2nd. Get it right here.

Guided By Voices tour dates

8/28 — Skully’s Music Diner, Columbus, OH

9/10 — Irving Plaza, NYC

9/11 — Royale, Boston

10/8 — Tellus360, Lancaster, PA

10/22 — Ottobar, Baltimore

10/23 — College Street Music Hall, New Haven, CT

11/12 — Thalia Hall, Chicago

11/13 — Beachland Ballroom, Cleveland

12/17 — Phoenix, Toronto

12/18 — Mr. Smalls, Pittsburgh

Guided By Voices share two rippin' tunes off Earth Man Blues

Listen to "Trust Them Now" and "Free Agents" off GBV's new Earth Man Blues album out April 30th via Rockathon Records. 

90s Nostalgia: Guided By Voices on Open Mike with Mike Bullard

Here's Bob Pollard and his GBV crew performing "Teenage FBI" in Toronto back on September 23, 1999. 

Guided By Voices release Surrender Your Poppy Field today – 20/02/2020!

Listen to four new songs off GBV's first album of the decade, Surrender Your Poppy Field available via Rockathon.

Guided By Voices on tour
Fri 4/3 Ottobar Baltimore, MD
Sat 4/4 Mr. Smalls Pittsburgh, PA
Fri 4/24 Musikfest Cafe Bethlehem, PA
Sat 4/25 College Street Music Hall New Haven, CT
Fri 5/1 Shaky Knees Festival Atlanta, GA
Sat 5/2 Cat’s Cradle Carrboro, NC
Fri 5/8 Fremont Theater San Luis Obispo, CA
Sat 5/9 The Regency San Francisco, CA
Fri 7/10 Fine Line Music Hall Minneapolis, MN

GBV's "Sweating The Plague" out today!

Guided By Voices' third and best album this year so far, Sweating The Plague is out November 1. Listen to three songs following the press release. 

Here's the scoop... Robert Pollard’s prolific but private basement four-track recording project – Guided by Voices – finally found fame on the surface world in the early nineties, by which time the Dayton Ohio schoolteacher was already in his mid-thirties, with thousands of completed songs stored in a suitcase. Pollard may be experimenting with the formal limits of the rock song, endlessly recombining distressed fragments of the classic rock, British invasion and early prog sounds he assimilated as a little kid in the ‘60s,  but rooms full of drunken fans in their thousands are chanting “G B V!”, making his conceptual exercise pungently real.
Guided By Voices is now an unlikely candidate for the most perfect rock band of all time, whilst at the same time being a thoughtful reflection on what a rock bands is, a fantasy that becomes a fact. Sweating The Plague, Guided by Voices' 29th album and their third this year, spars playfully with stadium sized fidelity and uncharacteristically impactful arrangements.   Sweating The Plague is an uncharacteristically concise rock’n’roll record, with lush gems tucked in amongst the hooks and hits, and with a sprinkling of prog rock moves. And, as usual with Pollard, the album is sequenced as a whole, a coherent collection, rather than a selection of downloadable content baubles.
Producer Travis Harrison’s counterintuitive approach to Guided By Voices’ historically lo-fi sound was  that he didn’t want it to sound homemade.  Sweating The Plague is constructed as a classic 12 song album experience, made to be played loud. Being a fan of Pollard, and Guided by Voices,can feel like standing in a ticker tape parade and reaching out to grab at stray releases as they endless flurry of output from the Needmore Songs publishing house billows around you.  But here’s twelve compatible nuggets of Pollard content in one handy package, all boxed up and ready to go. 
Listen to "Heavy Like The World," "Ego Central High" and "Immortals" below.                 




GBV TOUR DATES
Fri 11/29 - Grog Shop - Cleveland, OH
Sat 11/30 - Saint Andrews Hall - Detroit, MI
Fri 12/6 - Underground Arts - Philadelphia, PA
Sat 12/7 - Black Cat - Washington, DC
Tue 12/31 - Teragram Ballroom - Los Angeles, CA (SOLD OUT) -  special show: 100 songs  (one time only!)

Happy Birthday Robert Pollard!

Raising a glass to Bob Pollard on his day with a new Guided By Voices tune "Cohesive Scoops" off the 100 Dougs EP.

Probing new Robert Pollard bio Closer You Are out today!

Written by Bob Pollard's longtime pal Matthew Cutter, Closer You Are is an in-depth look at the man behind GBV.

Guided By Voices to play Lee's Palace on October 25

Tickets will be on sale June 29th via Ticketfly for GBV's triumphant return to Toronto in October. Check the clip below.