Album Profile: Guided By Voices - Let's Go Eat The Factory

Guided By Voices didn't give us the album we wanted. They gave us the album we needed.

Most people automatically want to compare and contrast it to "Bee Thousand" or "Under The Bushes, Under The Stars". Don't do that. If you continue down that path, you will be disappointed. Matter of fact, you'll ALWAYS be disappointed if you compare everything GBV does to those records. Much in the same way if you compare "Subterranean Jungle" by the Ramones to "Rocket To Russia". Is it as good? well, no. But does it have charms all of it's own, and songs that make it a worthy addition to their oeuvre? Most certainly. That's half of what "Let's Go Eat The Factory" is. The other half, the more important, in my mind, is that Pollard, Sprout, and co. have gone back to making records on their own terms, in their own way, whatever that may be. Record in the garage/practice space? Sure. Cobble it together from all of the brilliant bits we've put down on the ol' trusty 4-track recorder? Check. Tape quality doesn't matter. Song quality does. "Factory" feels like a true GBV record, in the manner in which they made a name and have excelled at before it became fashionable. I'm not looking for "Bee Thousand" Strikes Back. I'm looking for the moment they are in right now, as that tape passes from one magnetic head to the another. I got that. I'm a happy man.

Rating 8/10. "The Unsinkable Fats Domino" and the large amount of Tobin Sprout numbers make this a worthy addition to the already formidable GBV output.

- Jay Ingstrup

www.gbv.com

After a fifteen year hiatus, the "classic line up" of Guided By Voices finished off its year-long reunion tour by recording an album of 21 new songs, making a deliberate effort to return to what bandleader Robert Pollard calls the "semi-collegial" approach of iconic GBV albums like Bee Thousand and Alien Lanes. Let's Go Eat The Factory is some kind of return to form: sprawling, variegated, and yet still recognizably and coherently Guided By Voices in both its literal and mythic senses.

Choosing to eschew the recording studio, Let's Go Eat The Factory was instead manufactured in the living rooms, basements, and garages of various long-time bandmembers.

Some tracks were recorded more-or-less live at Mitch Mitchell's garage, where the band would often practice back in the early- and mid-90s. These sessions comprised Mitch, Bob, and Jimmy Pollard, Bob's brother and long-time collaborator, who, though never a part of the touring ensemble, always played a crucial role on the classic-era releases. Some tracks were improvised over acoustic jam sessions at Greg Demos' house. Many were recorded at Tobin Sprout's place in Wherever, Michigan, and later lovingly fucked with in order to achieve the proper level of weirdness. Band members switched instruments (e.g. Bob plays drums; Mitch plays drums; Jimmy Pollard plays bass; Greg plays lead guitar; Toby plays pretty much everything; etc.) and Bob gladly accepted input from the rest of the band. Tobin Sprout wrote or co-wrote and sings on six out of the 21 songs.

The aesthetic is very much in keeping with Guided By Voices, 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. Devoted fans of Bee Thousand will not be disappointed in, for instance, the demonically tuneful "Chocolate Boy," or the relentless chug of "We Won't Apologize For The Human Race," which Tobin Sprout describes as "Peter Gabriel singing 'I Am The Walrus.'" Other standouts include "Doughnut For A Snowman," which Pollard calls "the goofiest, twinkliest song I’ve ever written," or "Spider Fighter," a Tobin Sprout number that was in fact the first song title conceived for the new album, and which features a piano coda that Pollard likens to "a Pete Townshend demo for Lifehouse."