Guided By Voices The Head

Tremblers And Goggles By Rank marks a new phase in Robert Pollard’s songwriting evolution. His songs have always included non-traditional approaches to form and song structure, but with this album, he has pushed it further than ever. While the familiar Guided By Voices pop-craft and melodic virtuosity always occupies center stage, the first-time listener will never be able to predict what’s coming next in a song.

Is it really a musical?! The 33rd Guided By Voices album, Earth Man Blues, is a magical cinematic rock album, full of dramatic and surreal twists and turns. Lyrics and liner notes trace the growth of young Harold Admore Harold through a coming of age and a reckoning with darkness. Vivid scenes appear: snapshots of youth, fantastical nightmares, unknown worlds.

Starting off the year with a 100-song marathon in Los Angeles on New Year’s Eve, Robert Pollard is setting a mighty high bar for Guided By Voices in 2020. Following three acclaimed and stylistically distinct full-length albums in 2019, Surrender Your Poppy Field, is a head-spinning tour de force: a bit of everything… plus more! And hands down the most adventurous GBV album ever. There are lo-fi four-track tape recordings, there are songs recorded with a single microphone in a basement, there are big studio fully-produced hook-laden pop songs, and there is a lot in between. Seemingly, the guiding concept of Surrender Your Poppy Field was to make the songs sound as different from one another as possible: sudden shifts in mood, tempo and rhythm, unexpected chord progressions, false endings and codas, string orchestrations, mysterious voices…

Dead Meadow's unique marriage of Sabbath riffs, dreamy layers of guitar-fuzz bliss, and singer Jason Simon's high-pitched melodic croon have won over psychedelic pop/rock and stoner rock fans alike, while elements of folk and pop would creep into their formula over time. Although the band's members met while attending all-ages shows in and around Washington, D.C.'s punk/indie scene, the trio draws more of its sound from such classic rock legends as Pink Floyd and Black Sabbath. The trio formed in the fall of 1998 out of the ashes of local indie rock bands the Impossible 5 and Coulour, with singer/guitarist Simon, bassist Steve Kille, and drummer Mark Laughlin. The three members set out to fuse their love of early-'70s hard rock and '60s psychedelia with their love of fantasy and horror writers J.R.R. Tolkien and H.P. Lovecraft. Collection includes: "Dead Meadow" (2000); "Howls From The Hills" (2001); "Got Live If You Want It!" (2002); "Shivering King And Others" (2003); "Feathers" (2005); "Old Growth" (2008); "Three Kings" (2010); "Warble Womb" (2013).

What’s Up Matador is a 2-CD (or 2-LP) compilation that was released by Matador Records that chronicles some of the best artists within their roster during the 90s. The first disc serves as a bit of a “best of” collection, featuring indie standouts by Yo La Tango, Pizzicato Five, Cat Power, Helium, and of course, Liz Phair. The second disc is what is particularly noteworthy, as it features previously unreleased material from many of the same artists. This marks the official debut of Liz’s “Stuck On An Island,” a b-side that fans would later discover was in the initial running for whitechocolatespaceegg.