From the Pixies to Pavement to Neutral Milk Hotel, the most notable indie-rock reunions have transformed merely influential bands into actually successful ones who can headline large theatres and festivals for audiences five times the size of the ones they entertained in their former lives. But the success of the rebooted “classic” Guided by Voices line-up of 1992-96 can be measured not by ticket sales (they’re pretty much playing the same sized venues Robert Pollard frequented before he first deep-sixed GBV in 2004) but stamina. Not only have they channelled their 2011-tour momentum into making new records, their current rate of production makes their industrious 90s incarnation seem lazy, as if Pollard needed to maintain his reputation for being crazy-prolific even by the standards of our current, hyper-accelerated musical culture. And now that the initial reunion buzz has subsided, Guided by Voices essentially find themselves in the same position they were in 20 years ago, before 1994’s Bee Thousand turned them into national authorities on Tascams and tape hiss. Long removed from their moment as a major-label-courted leading light on the Matador Records roster, Guided by Voices once again resemble a Dayton secret society that self-releases records how they want and when they want, impervious to prevailing trends, industry promotional timetables, and concerns over whether a song comprising just a single verse and half a chorus is a song at all.
Of course, the big difference this time out is that the classic GBV line-up has several classic albums under their belts to live up to, and though their recent albums have by no means tarnished their legacy, they haven’t exactly expanded upon it either. And so it goes with Motivational Jumpsuit, which, for those keeping score, is the band’s sixth release in two years. While each of the post-reunion records may lean more heavily on a specific aspect of GBV’s psychedelic/pop/prog/post-punk amalgam (Let’s Eat the Factory is the weirdest of the bunch; English Little League is the one overstuffed with ballads; and so forth), they’ve all yielded a killer-to-filler ratio that’s respectfully above average but not exceptional enough to truly distinguish them amid the band’s sprawling discography. But while the “classic line-up” billing technically no longer applies from hereon out, the shake-up suggests that GBV will remain a going concern for the foreseeable future, reinforcing the idea that Guided by Voices is not a particular group of players, but whoever the hell Bob Pollard says it is.
As much as Pollard’s songbook has historically drawn from the former school teacher’s daydream fantasia of elves, demons, and robots, many of his signature tracks also function as the allegorical, self-aware musings of an accidental rock star cast out of the garage and onto the treacherous terrain of the music industry—the lost soul who shoots himself on rock ‘n’ roll trying to navigate a game of pricks. And so it’s safe to assume that Motivational Jumpsuit’s excitable opener—“Littlest League Possible"—isn’t about baseball at all, but rather the cheeky musings of a former major-label contender who’s happy to be back among his cult. (“To be the biggest fish in the smallest pond/ On the littlest island where I shall reside.”) That enthusiasm proves infectious—packing 20 songs into 37 minutes, Motivational Jumpsuit is the shortest LP amid GBV’s recent avalanche of albums. But, most importantly, it’s also the most briskly paced of the bunch, reaching Alien Lanes-levels of expediency in its peaks: “Planet Score” replays “Game of Pricks”; “Difficult Outburst and Breakthroughs” gets close to “Closer You Are”; and the charming “Vote for Me Dummy” cruises down the same open interstate as “Motor Away.” And where most GBV records don’t so much stage grand finales as simply peter out once the song tap is turned off, “Alex and the Omegas” is the rare exception that feels like it was designed as both a record and show closer, an amplified-to-rock charge that doubles as a victory lap.
But even as Motivational Jumpsuit faithfully approximates the grainy fidelity and 60-second dosages of Bee Thousand and Alien Lanes, it can’t maintain the same dizzying standards of pop euphoria throughout. Those records may have had their share of tossed-off tracks, but they were usually deployed as brief, absurdist interludes connecting key songs. On Motivational Jumpsuit, however, the most undercooked songs are often the longest, with the keyboard-jabbed psychedelic sludge of “I Am Columbus” and the jack-hammered meta-jokes of “Writer’s Bloc (Psycho All the Time)” encroaching on the three-minute mark without really earning the right to stick around that long. And though Pollard’s long-time foil Tobin Sprout dutifully turns up to provide his George Harrison/John Entwistle-scaled songwriting rations, his contributions are inconsistent, ranging from the radiant, Clean-style motorik jangle of “Record Level Love” to the workmanlike T. Rex-ian rumble of “Jupiter Spin” to the overwrought balladry of “Some Things Are Big and Some Things Are Small,” whose melodramatic chorus delivery feels at odds with the matter-of-fact titular lyric. Of course, by this point in the current campaign, GBV fans know that finding the gold will take a little more digging than before. Motivational Jumpsuit does have this going for it: If there is to ever be a greatest-hits compilation culled from this modern GBV era—and I’m willing to bet a fervent rockologist like Pollard has already thought up the name and cut up some old Sears catalogue images for the cover art—Motivational Jumpsuit is the frontrunner to have the greatest representation.
[Editor's note: This original version of this review incorrectly stated that Kevin March played drums.]
