Some Guided by Voices albums maximise Robert Pollard’s skill for melody, others maximise the band’s agedness. It’s a lethal lottery; last year’s Thick Rich and Delicious was a melodic masterclass, exceeding all expectations of an album with a Cardi B-esque title; follow-up Crawlspace of the Pantheon is a croaky ol’ rock album with weaker melodies, keen to call its critics ‘whippersnappers’.
The band’s forty-fourth album comes in the midst of the present-day GBV release surge, in which there’s always a chance of getting up to three Guided by Voices albums per calendar year. It’s no surprise that they won’t all be knockouts filled with anthems or a youthful hard core, but even with expectations suspended, there is a lot missing from forty-four.
When a certain level of emotion is favoured, one that observes the crushingness of yearning, songs like We Outlast Them All persevere and become the anthems that Crawlspace is otherwise lacking. Lost in the Sun, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to know if it demands that same emotional overdrive. It then crashes out, ending before we get to find out.
Pollard himself proclaimed Crawlspace an emotional album, but the realness of his emotion is sparse. I can take some, only some, from the few seconds of Arthur Square in which he sings “I’m not supposed to be climbing ladders”, and the bassline livens up for the better, injecting a little pride.
The album’s melodies are deathlessly reserved; the brief, descending sprawls that ram into (How Would You Like a) Chariot Ride are breaths of fresh air. Pollard chooses other things over melodic strength; Advance Without Dropping’s disorienting changes in rhythm; One Last Blow’s inane vocalisations; A Grand Ceremonial Jester’s off-putting regalness, its ‘BUM BUM BUM BUM’ refrain that farts more than it sings.
Even the cohesive tunes like When You’re My Clown (Nothing Happens) or those that gather some atmosphere from sleepy agedness – such as Landscaping – sound as though they’re holding back. We know that the emotional, harmonic Guided by Voices still exists, but it rarely exists on Crawlspace of the Pantheon.
Best track – We Outlast Them All.
Rating – 5 out of 10
