How Do You Spell Heaven is one of the best and smartest rock albums Guided by Voices have given us since Isolation Drills, and this music confirms Pollard is no dummy when it comes to putting together a band.
On Guided by Voices’ latest, Robert Pollard sounds reenergized by a sobering sense of lucidity. Some of these songs rank among the most intimate and earthbound in the band’s bottomless canon.
Perhaps nothing here, not even the ebullient power pop of “Diver Dan,” is likely to become an all-time classic, but Heaven affirms Pollard’s ability to write off-kilter-yet-addictive melodies remains undiminished after all these years.
There’s nothing wrong whatsoever with How Do You Spell Heaven, it’s just that Pollard works best when walking the wire between fucked-up weirdness and acts of songwriting genius, and wobbling either side. Here he’s looking towards neither heaven nor hell; simply trudging (albeit stylishly) on terra firma.
Guided By Voices maintain their knack for bright, chaotic pop movements on new album How Do You Spell Heaven, complete with angular chord patchworks, abrupt melodic transitions and deliriously honest storytelling all held together with glue, but unfortunately, it also suffers from a lack of consistency.
1 | The Birthday Democrats 2:29 | |
2 | King 007 2:51 | |
3 | Boy W 2:33 | |
4 | Steppenwolf Mausoleum 3:21 | |
5 | Cretinous Number Ones 1:45 | |
6 | They Fall Silent 0:55 | |
7 | Diver Dan 2:03 | |
8 | How to Murder a Man 2:43 | |
9 | Pearly Gates Smoke Machine 4:02 | |
10 | Tenth Century 2:37 | |
11 | How Do You Spell Heaven 1:52 | |
12 | Paper Cutz 2:36 | |
13 | Low Flying Perfection 2:36 | |
14 | Nothing Gets You Real 2:23 | |
15 | Just to Show You 2:16 |