I can never figure out if Robert Pollard is the brilliant writer everyone says he is or if he's just making fun of everyone by constructing deliberately obscure lyrics to see how far people will go to translate them. Myself, I've decided that the guy is the Nostradamus of our times, and future generations will be able to predict weather changes, Armageddon, and the rise and fall of the Anti-Christ by deciphering the collective releases of Guided by Voices.
So saying, this new Guided By Voices album finds somewhat of a conflict with me. When it hits, it hits dead on-the guitar ballad 'Hold On Hope' is destined to find radio play everywhere and will probably appear in numerous rock anthologies for years to come, while 'Zoo Pie' is classic GbV, ripe with static and fuzz and distortion. However, while his album as a whole is a hell of a lot better than pretty much anything else out there, it's not the best GbV album. It's too clean, it's too well-produced, and that nasty, gritty, incredibly intimate quality of all that has come before is one of the things that made those albums to precious to their listeners, or at least to me.