Let's Go Eat The Factory

Guided By Voices classic lineup to release Let's Go Eat The Factory, first album of new material in fifteen years. After a fifteen year hiatus, the "classic line up" of Guided By Voices (Robert Pollard, Tobin Sprout, Mitch Mitchell, Greg Demos, and Kevin Fennell) finishes off its year-long reunion tour by releasing an album of 21 new songs, deliberately choosing to return to what bandleader Robert Pollard calls the "semi-collegial" approach of iconic GBV albums like Bee Thousand and Alien Lanes. Let's Go Eat The Factory is much more than a mere return, however: sprawling, variegated, heavy, melodic, and yet still recognizably and coherently Guided By Voices in both its literal and mythic senses. "At first I said: no reunion, period," explains Pollard about the decision to revive Guided By Voices. "And definitely no record or re-formation. But the tour went so well; the response was really unexpected. I thought at some point that a lot of people would like to hear new GBV music. The chemistry was still there." Choosing to eschew the recording studio, LGETF was instead manufactured in the living rooms, basements, and garages of various long-time bandmembers. Some tracks were recorded more-or-less live at Mitch Mitchell's garage, where the band would often practice back in the early- and mid-90s. These sessions comprised Mitch, Bob, and Jimmy Pollard, Bob's brother and long-time collaborator, who, though never a part of the touring ensemble, always played a crucial role on the classic-era releases. Some tracks were improvised over acoustic jam sessions at Greg Demos' house. Many were recorded at Tobin Sprout's place in Wherever, Michigan, and later lovingly fucked with in order to achieve the proper level of weirdness. Band members occasionally switched instruments (Bob plays drums; Mitch plays drums; Kevin plays drums; Jimmy Pollard plays bass; Greg plays lead guitar; Toby plays pretty much everything; etc.), and Bob gladly accepted input from other band members. Tobin Sprout wrote or co-wrote and sings on six out of the 21 songs. The aesthetic is very much in keeping with Guided By Voices, but in some unexpected ways (more prevalent use of keyboards and samples, for one thing) the 21st century can't help but poke its nose into the resulting music. Devoted fans of Bee Thousand will not be disappointed in, for instance, the demonically tuneful "Chocolate Boy," or the relentless chug of "We Won't Apologize For The Human Race," which Tobin Sprout describes as "Peter Gabriel singing 'I Am The Walrus.'" Other standouts include "Doughnut For A Snowman," which Pollard calls "the goofiest, twinkliest song I've ever written," or "Spider Fighter," a Tobin Sprout number that was in fact the first song title conceived for the new album, and which features a piano coda that Pollard likens to "a Pete Townshend demo for Lifehouse."

The reformed "classic-era" GBV have produced an album with the collagist careen of Bee Thousand and Propeller and but it ultimately comes up short in the songs department. The best moments come courtesy of Tobin Sprout.

There are dozens of guys out there who can claim to have spent time, however brief, in Guided By Voices. But it takes only a few seconds of hearing Let’s Go Eat The Factory to recognize the exact right combination of guys who recorded the band’s most beloved records. Saying Factory deserves to be placed in the vaunted…

Let’s Go Eat the Factory is a 21-track burst of classic Guided by Voices lo-fi production; trashy garage-soaked guitars and…

Check out our album review of Artist's Let's Go Eat the Factory on Rolling Stone.com.

By the time Guided by Voices called it quits at the end of 2004, it was taken as gospel by most fans that Robert Pollard was the band, especially given the notorious 1996 incident in which Pollard fired all his bandmates and replaced them en masse with the group Cobra Verde.

It's about time! After a 15 year hiatus, the "classic lineup" of Guided By Voices-Robert Pollard, Tobin Sprout, Mitch Mitchell, Greg Demos, and Kevin Fennell—has finally returned to the studio for its first album of new material since 1996's Under the B

Robert Pollard has reassembled the 'classic' GVB lineup with melodic, but typically scrappy, results, writes<strong> Hermione Hoby</strong>

Guided by Voices 'Lets Go Eat the Factory' album review on Northern Transmissions.

Robert Pollard's lo-fi weekend warriors are back. <strong>Maddy Costa</strong> accepts the challenge to rock