This newsletter is an extension of the 2022 Summer Album Guide, and will evolve to include writing about the community, the city and the world in areas other than hot vinyl and vital music. But for now consider it a gesture to continue the art of the album review, forever disappearing from our print newspapers. - Dave Bidini
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Guided by Voices
La La Land
You look deeply into a person’s eyes when you ask after the quality of a new Guided By Voices album. Are they protecting their favourite band in light of sliding quality? Are they hopelessly devoted to everything Robert Pollard expels? Is the latest slab of songs named after spaceships, birds and scientists actually, you know, good? So stacked is their exquisite middle period —Mag Earwig followed by Do the Collapse followed by Isolation Drills— that the band’s last few decades have resembled a champion pole vaulter bouncing off a wall-face of their own construction. Sometimes the legend eats the band and sometimes the band eats the legend, but more often it’s the former. Being heavy can also be, well, heavy.
There are essentially familiar ideas and melodic themes on La La Land, and yet something here lifts GBV’s 36th album above the usual, measured goodness. It could be the surfeit of acoustic and twelve string guitars, and occasional piano, leaping forward like strange new animals. It could be the seasoned, weary beauty of Robert Pollard’s voice, delivered less like a man shouting up the staircase of a burning building and more like a person resting against a wall after the fire. Or it could be the sudden nudge into adventurous song forms (“Queen of Spaces” explores curious droning terrain and “Slowly on the Wheel” evokes both Lambchop and Steeleye Span) where space and distance is embraced and a sense of slowing, rather than speed, informs the work.
But it could also be me. You forget that, as a devoted listener, sometimes you need to listen to a band less to know them better, and, in this sense, “La La Land” is an example of stepping away only to move closer. I’d given previous records sideways attention after a lifetime immersed in the catalogue, but I’m glad that I burrowed into this one. While “La La Land” helps remind me what I’ve always loved about GBV-- the psychic familiarity of their melodies, the twin guitar riffage, the cut-up lyrics, the Robert Wyatt meets Robin Zander vocals-- it’s also a record that stays with you, and because new things are happening here, you feel the way you do when a friend you haven’t seen in a long time tells you something good about themselves. Your devotion is rewarded and you’re as hopeful for the future as you were about the past.
Buy the record on Bandcamp HERE
Ghost Woman
Anne, If
Ghost Woman lie somewhere between Eric’s Trip and Grand Funk Railroad, layering bronto-rock thump in a dreamy lyrical veil to create music that presses weightlessly down upon itself, seeming heavy and light at the same time. Another writer might suggest they’re like The Sheepdogs without their Molson aspirations, and yet, on jam band Reddit, they fall down the rung for the refreshing economy of their songs, born from a 60s hit parade sensibility and guitars that just try to get by. I could have done with a bit more dry alongside the singer’s wet, and the slipping-out-tune lead bass is charming to a point, but, in many respects, “Anne, If” is a small triumph of a record—“Lo Extrano” is an acoustic revelation, too— likely enjoyed best on vinyl.
Buy the record on Bandcamp HERE
Shirley Hurt
Shirley Hurt
January Sundays are damage days— it’s enough to crawl from the brutal wreckage of 2022 without the early woes of the new year piling on— but that’s what your stereo is for: shuffling across the floor weary in slippers and pyjamas to poke the receiver or bluetooth alive when your phone or laptop is yapping at you to stay put and tap and scroll. Light a smoke, or whatever you do, and remind yourself that records like “Shirley Hurt” will never let you down: morning hymns of despair and hope that get us through whatever invasive thought-junk might cloud our ability to dwell in the sheer bliss of living. Sophia Katz is a Sandy Denny pairing and the band collects around the songs like a young Fairport Convention. Before you know it, it’s noon, the sun is out, it’s cold and the skating rink calls. “Shirley Hurt” works there, too.
Buy the record on Bandcamp HERE