Guided by Voices will release their 41st album, Universe Room, in just a couple weeks. The album marks the longest-lasting lineup of GBV (one of the best, too) — Robert Pollard, Doug Gillard, Kevin March, Mark Shue and Bobby Bare Jr — and this one is shaping up to be a little grittier, sonically, than the band’s last few. “I wanted to create, hopefully, an experience, kind of a wild ride, where the listener would want to hear it multiple times in order to grasp all the sections and fields of sound to discover something new with each listen,” says Robert Pollard. “I trimmed down the songs so that there wasn’t a lot of repetition, so you get a lot of sections that happen only once or twice.”
New single “Elfin Flower With Knees” feels born out of ground, as if it’s been gestating with insects, with guitars caked in mud. GBV don’t head into post-punk territory ofter these days but this feels like it coulda come straight from 1979.
“Universe Room is our 18th studio album in 8 years,” says bassist Mark Shue. “This one is a wild ride and was a real joy for us to make. Bob’s songwriting is on such a streak and taking powerful and exciting new directions. It’s very inspiring. As a band we’d just come off of a great year of live shows, so I think we were a fairly well oiled machine going into the making of this record. We had a lot of fun playing in the sandbox and exploring wild and fresh approaches to recording and producing this LP together. I think our hardcore fans and newcomers alike will find this album to be a real fun experience full of great twists and turns along the way.”
The song premieres in this post — listen below.
Universe Room is out February 7 via GBV Inc. So far the band don’t have any live dates scheduled for 2025 but hopefully that will change soon.