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Album Review
by SashaS
14-8-2003
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More on: Guided By Voices
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| Guided By Voices' 'Earthquake Glue' |
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Guided By Voices: 'Earthquake Glue'
(Matador)
Guided By Voices: a marginalized longevity
There is a theory of communications quantifying the relationship between informative and redundant. In streetspeak – amount of new versus the known, familiar, recycled. The greater percentage of redundant the more widespread its appeal; for instance, pop music is something like 30 percent, or less, new. Anything around the mid-mark is marginal and it can get popular but it can also remain on the cult side, such as Radiohead, some R&B, most of rap, metal. Above it is the more informative and getting on a limb, avant-garde is the rarefied air where we find the most intriguing artists.
So, in the ‘percentage theorem’, which doesn’t account quality, where do Guided By Voices and their ‘Earthquake Glue’ album fit in? Well, liked for their retro/post-modern approach to songwriting with distant echoes of the original psychedelia (Ray Davies, Syd Barrett, Roy Wood), GBV come armed with an armful of songs that gladly surfs the sonic cloud fantastique!
The upbeat of the opening ‘My Kind Of Solider’ is succeeded by ‘My Son, My Secretary and My Country’, an acoustic-driven number with folksy overtones, and then the freakbeating ‘I’ll Replace You With Machines’ that sounds like a cross between Gary Numan and Einsturzende Neubauten! Quite a ‘werk’, and such sonic triumphs continue on bass-propelled-blues-mutation ‘Dirty Water’, jaggedly-rhythm’d ‘Dead Cloud’, the tonal cascade of ‘Mix Up The Satellite’, the Who-like sized epic ‘Secret Star’…
‘A Trophy Mule In Particular’ is like a T-junction where prog (early Genesis), noise-beats (Sonic Youth-ish) and stoner lyrics (Beach Boy-esque) are conjured for a lift-off. As idiosyncratic as one should expect after the mainman Robert Pollard’s two decades in the business. The alchemy of ‘Earthquake Glue’ is a mixture of fear and survival instinct. Approach this album as if your life (of a music lover) depends on it. It today ‘creative’ climate it may actually do.
Thus, our heartometer (as accurate as humanly possible) measures that GVB are 65 to 35 on the info side. Probably the last great album of the summer…
8/10
Tour dates:
29 September – Roadhouse, Manchester
30 September – ULU, London
(More shows are expected to be added soon.)
SashaS
14-8-2003
Guided By Voices’ album ‘Earthquake Glue’ is released 18 August 2003 on Matador
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