Dayton, Ohio's Guided By Voices brings its traveling drunken circus back to town in support of its fantastic new CD, Isolation Drills (TVT). The album is much sharper than its predecessor, Do the Collapse, and there's every reason to expect the songs to come even more alive when accompanied by chorus-line kicks and windmill guitar.
Of course, as with any veteran band that continues to evolve, some older fans are bound to complain that Guided By Voices has lost its touch, that the new lineup doesn't understand the songs, that the band never should have moved up from its four-track, lo-fi weirdness to its current straight-ahead, upper-middle-fi anthems. But the thing is, Bob Pollard and company have always written their share of anthems, tape hiss or no tape hiss. So hoist a beer (Lord knows Bob will), get ready to sing along to the Big Star-ish "Glad Girls," and leave your "I'm a bigger GBV fan than you are" attitude at home with your records, because nobody likes the guy who keeps requesting the B-sides from the British seven-inch or the album tracks from Devil Between My Toes. The band won't know the songs, and it doesn't make you look cool.
