Almost up to forty albums in their fortieth year of playing, GBV is one of those bands that you can rely on to tickle your fancy and prick your imagination. Songs that reveal themselves even more with multiple listens and a careful ear, Pollard doesn’t ever seem to sacrifice quality for quantity.

The latest album was recorded in a Brooklyn basement with producer Travis Harrison, live to tape. It has the electricity of a live show, and you can imagine some of the great songs from this album, like “Why Won’t You Kiss Me” and “Cats on Heat,” making it into their live show seamlessly. “Don’t Blow Your Dream Job,” Pollard sings towards the end of the album, which leads you to imagine all that it has taken for him to keep on course in his adventurous career choice, after leaving an English teaching job forty years ago.

“On the morning of the aftermath / Our goal was to have everything,” he sings on “Mothers Mirth.” Where some may say that you can have “too much of a good thing,” (or too many GBV records, as the case may be,) Pollard and company respectfully disagree. Their records, since their raucous lo-fi breakout records like Bee Thousand and Alien Lanes, have always cashed in on a marriage of fun and seriousness, playfulness and passion, and this record is no different. Perhaps one of their best records in a while, fifteen songs and forty some minutes as it might be.

The first minute and thirty seconds of “Rust Belt Boogie” is an instrumental jam, and highlights the multi-layered joy of creativity for the band. There is as much fun in the guitar guru work as the brilliant and often absurd wordplay. “Accidental harmonies / Coming from the slot machines,” is a good way to describe the wonderful and strange vocal layers on this album. There are acoustic jams on the record, as well as the punk and noise influenced tracks that they are known for. It is a varied album, with many an indie hit on it. For the GBV hardcore fan this is an event. For the uninitiated or those who only swear by a few of their albums, I would say give it a couple of listens and watch it unfold, cast its universal net into your music loving soul.

order Welshpool Frillies by Guided By Voices HERE