CD of The Week

When Guided By Voices reunited in 2010, they were awarded the standard fanfare: full tour, nearly sold out on each date. What wasn't expected, until it was announced in September, was a new record. Let's Go Eat The Factory is the first record in 15 years from a line-up responsible for such classic records as 1994's Bee Thousandand 1995's Alien Lanes.

Let's Go Eat The Factory accurately taps into a sound they created the first time around mixing lo-fi, via 4-track recording at band members' homes, and more polished, traditional production methods. It starts and finishes strong with "Laundry and Lasers," (featuring the line "Let's go eat the factory") and "We Won't Apologize For The Human Race" respectively, with the middle of it wavering between Tobin Sprout's collection of insular tracks with at times ethereal vocals buried in the mix, and strong, well developed Robert Pollard rock standards, standouts including "Doughnut For A Snowman," "Hang Mr. Kite," and "My Europa." There's a timeless quality to a large part of the Guided By Voices catalog, largely attributed to Pollard's sense of melody and how heavily influenced they are by rock music of the late 60s and 70s.

Tobin Sprout, chief Pollard collaborator in the band's first inception, is responsible for the lo-fi recording quality that defines those first GBV records. Sprout standouts include "Spiderfighter" a gritty garage track that flips to a piano ballad for the last third of the song, and "Waves," a fuzzed-out shoegaze track. "Old Bones," another song performed and written by Sprout, conjures images of a softer Tom Waits and a melody reminiscent of "Auld Lang Syne."

While "Factory" certainly fits into the bands history amongst Bee Thousand and Alien Lanes, it lacks some cohesion and feels a little rushed. Regardless, it's a snapshot of where the band is right now. In standard Pollard fashion, there is already more in store, an album due in May and another tentative album in the works. "Prolific" doesn't even begin to describe the output of Robert Pollard, having released and been the chief songwriter on over 40 releases in the past 25 years. He once famously stated if he wrote 5 songs on the toilet, "3 of them will be good."