Guided by Voices Reign on ‘Strut of Kings’

“Age rules with reason, and who’s to disagree?” is a line from “Wished I Was a Giant”, the opening track of Guided By Voices’ Vampire on Titus (1993). That long ago LP was among Robert Pollard’s last-ditch efforts to make it as a musician, with Guided by Voices being a side hustle to his day job as an elementary school teacher in Dayton, Ohio. It would take another year and another round of lo-fi gems for Pollard and Co. to finally make their breakthrough with Bee Thousand (1994), a mixtape masterpiece of two-minute epics and 60-second ideas that captured the full range of Guided by Voices’ pop acuity and garage rock spirit.

Strut of Kings is being promoted as their 41st album, which is both astonishing and a number that actually seems low. Guided by Voices have been on a long journey with hiatuses, lineup changes, and shifting commercial fortunes on the indie rock scene. Despite such unpredictability, the records have kept coming. Last year alone witnessed three LPs – La La Land, Welshpool Frillies, and Nowhere to Go But Up ­– which came across as a valiant move of late-career bravado. Designed to celebrate 40 years of Guided by Voices, the results were somewhat mixed, but Pollard hasn’t lost his stamina.

By what metrics should a Guided by Voices album be judged? This question is subject to vigorous fan debate given the facts of longevity and productivity just made. It’s ultimately a fool’s errand to compare Guided by Voices to other bands. Their new work can only be judged by their past work, and while it is too soon to assess Strut of Kings as classic or not, this latest LP sounds stronger, tighter, and more coherent than last year’s releases. True, coherence is a complex matter with Guided by Voices – the charisma of past albums has depended on a certain eclecticism. In this instance, it works to the benefit of the LP.

The title Strut of Kings is a giveaway for the attitude on the LP, which is confident while also possessing an undertone of self-deprecation. It is also unusual, given Pollard’s past propensity for promoting the underdog, whether in elementary school or life. He has never given the slightest impression of being a monarchist, whether metaphorically or factually. That said, there is a lot of guitar pomp and swagger on this album, to which Pollard is entitled. It shows up in the coda to the opening track, “Show Me the Castle”, and it is foregrounded further down the track listing on the exuberant “Fictional Environment Dream”, which is one of the best Guided by Voices’ songs in a long while.

The remainder of the album sustains this upbeat atmosphere. The following track, “Olympus Cock in Radiana”, contains the LP’s title in its lyrics and is another song with a bring-it-on attitude. With its stomp and roll, the waggishly named “Cavemen Running Naked” is sure to be a fist-pumping favorite live. The swing of “Timing Voice” recalls the songcraft of 1990s-era Guided by Voices. The introspective acoustic songs “This Will Go On” and “Bit of a Crunch” bring the volume down with minor key melodramas that further enhance the buoyant mood surrounding them.

Circling back to the opening lyric from Vampire on Titus, this distant adage appears to be true in the case of Strut of Kings. With Guided by Voices’ new lineup since 2016 – including Doug Gillard (guitar), Bobby Bare Jr. (guitar), Mark Shue (bass), and Kevin March (drums) – Pollard has continued to manifest his ideas more cleanly and with little disruption. There is the counterargument that the classic lineup with Tobin Sprout playing his Paul McCartney role against Pollard’s John Lennon (or vice versa) remains unsurpassed. Let sleeping dogs lie.

“Everywhere I go, people want to know who I am,” starts the muscular single, “Serene King”. “So I tell them, I am the Serene King in a half-asleep dream-waltz across a battlefield.” These lines may be as good a summary as any for Pollard and Guided by Voices at this stage of their career.

Like a Midwestern Georges Simenon, Robert Pollard has taken a genre and made it his own through hundreds of compositions. Gone are the days of the hot freaks. Let the king reign.