Guided By Voices - Let's Go Eat The Factory

It must have been 1998 when I first stumbled across Guided By Voices. Once I had I was completely 'in', discovering a whole new world of lo-fi nurdlings, pulsing power pop and noise excursions. Their trademark is to drop a melodic hook that departs as soon as it arrives. Not only are most of their songs quite short but they really, really dislike repetition. If you're lucky, you might get a chorus twice (if you don't I suppose it's just a verse).

This dislike of conformity has kept them under the radar but even so they occupy probably the biggest niche in modern pop music, revered by peers and fans alike. In 2004 they split up after many rotations of band members, the only constant being Robert Pollard - former athlete, teacher, beer drinker extraordinaire and a songwriting conveyor belt who continued to put out solo records and collaborations at a fearsome rate. He makes records faster than I can listen to them.

Now, the classic GBV line-up has reformed and released 'Let's Go Eat The Factory', a 21 song, 42 minute LP. In keeping with Pollard's profligacy, a second album is due in the spring with some live shows later in the year. What makes this a GBV album rather than a Pollard solo record is the presence of Tobin Sprout - a major chord foil to Pollard's love of distortion and half-finished snippets of works in progress.

The album starts with the guitar clang of 'Laundry and Lasers - its power chords gradually giving way to a fuzzy accumulation of distortion. At 2.38 this is quite a long song. 'Spiderfighter' is underpinned by a churning riff that is eventually overtaken by a single piano note that then introduces a song segment which echoes The Who's 'Behind Blue Eyes'. At 3.35 this is a very long song.

The conventional melodic ear of Pollard is evident all over the place, from the Lennon-aping of 'Hang Mr Kite' to the Daltrey-esque delivery of 'The Unsinkable Fats Domino'. But nothing sticks, nothing hangs around for long - fragments of malformed songs seemingly taped as soon as they entered and left the head ('How I Met My Mother', 'Go Rolling Home'). 'The Big Hat And Toy Show' sees Pollard improvising lyrics into a 4 track machine against a minor chord guitar melee. It's a tough listen.

'Waves', on the other hand, is a masterpiece - a pastiche of early REM era guitar pop and Big Star harmonies underpinned by a confluence of guitars and keyboards that just motors towards the ocean. It seems effortless and almost throwaway, understated yet profound in its simplicity.

'Chocolate Boy' is 1.31 of wall to wall melody  - a song most writers would look at developing into a radio-friendly pension banker. Here Pollard is happy to see it end, gloriously, without a hint of selfishness. I played it over and over about twelve times and its subtleties are still escaping me.

'We Won't Apologise For The Human Race'  closes the album in a vague glam stomp - it reminds me of Ziggy-era Bowie. The clouds regularly part to let four or five melodies come and go, with backing harmonies seemingly an afterthought as Pollard gets serious, adopting a baritone to suit the message of the song. At 4.01 it's an epic, GBV's 'Freebird'.

For all it's varied production values 'Let's Go Eat The Factory'  is a fully formed, deceptively complex album by instinctively gifted songwriters and musicians. It won't win them any new fans but that's not the point. The band went through a period of chasing the hits in the late 90s which, in hindsight, didn't deliver their best work. This 'classic' line-up remains true to their ethos of doing what comes naturally. Occasionally this will result in a song that makes the soul leap, more often it will produce a vignette or idea which intrigues rather than grips. This is a band that demands effort - the more you put in the more you get out - a bit like life itself.