Guided By Voices are back on February 7 with their 18th record in the last 10 years, a Herculean feat that somehow only scratches the surface of the band’s prolificacy. Universe Room comes courtesy of GBV Inc. and is their 41st overall album. They continue to thrive in the lo-fi indie rock realms they once helped to create, sustaining its innovation and creativity through sheer force of will — and a knack for writing impossibly catchy songs. But the band isn’t resting on their laurels, opting to stretch their musical palette wider on this new collection, bridging the distance between lo-fi and hi-fi theatrics and traversing some surprising sonic landscapes.
“I wanted to create, hopefully, an experience, kind of a wild ride, where the listener would want to hear it multiple times in order to grasp all the sections and fields of sound to discover something new with each listen,” says Pollard. “I trimmed down the songs so that there wasn’t a lot of repetition, so you get a lot of sections that happen only once or twice.”
Their new single, “Dawn Believes”, is a jangling curiosity, a slice of affecting guitar pop that occasionally shifts into darker territory but doesn’t forsake the spryness of their earlier material. Pollard’s voice is as idiosyncratic as always, with the music loping alongside as it bounds toward some distant point on the horizon. Even in the absence of any percussion, the track sustains an internal momentum that drags you along in its wake. Shimmering and faintly iridescent, it illuminates the way forward while never forgetting to acknowledge the influence of the past.
Listen to the song below.
Guided By Voices’ new album, Universe Room, is due out Feb 7 via GBV Inc. Follow the band on Facebook, X, and Instagram.
