Tremblers and Goggles by Rank

Album review

Guided by Voices released August by Cake in April 2017, the album that introduced the GbV lineup of Robert Pollard on vocals, Doug Gillard and Bobby Bare Jr. on guitars, Mark Shue on bass, and Kevin March on drums. Without changing much about the sonic fundamentals of the band, this edition of the group has produced a large and strikingly accomplished body of work that's the finest in terms of consistent quality they've ever known. Tremblers and Goggles by Rank, which arrived in early July 2022, was the thirteenth LP they delivered in a bit over five years, an accomplishment many bands take decades to achieve, and all those albums have been better than simply good. With a band this solid and prolific behind him, unquestioned leader Robert Pollard has the means to change things up if he pleases, and Tremblers and Goggles by Rank reflects his desire to move away from the compact pop tunes that dominated lo-fi triumphs like 1994's Bee Thousand and 1995's Alien Lanes in favor of more ambitious structures. Pollard has never made a secret of his love of vintage prog-rock, and now that he had a band with the chops to pull it off, Tremblers and Goggles by Rank sees them embracing melodic shifts and rhythmic wanderlust in a way unthinkable in their earliest days. The mere fact that four of the ten songs run over four minutes long is telling, a length that would have seemed truly epic not that long ago for GbV. At the finale, "Who Wants to Go Hunting" clocks in at 6:18, marching through acoustic and electric sections, tempo changes, pianos and tympani, and guitars that sweetly chime and bitterly howl depending on the mood. In 2022, Guided by Voices not only can do all this, they can do it with skill and with the flair of a true showman. Further, for all the structural challenges of this material, the melodies are still pure Robert Pollard, and "Alex Bell," an idiosyncratic tribute to the founders of Big Star (Alex Chilton and Chris Bell), reminds us he still loves pop even as he explores new sonic vistas. With their 40th anniversary on the horizon in 2025, is it possible Guided by Voices have become the best recording act of their day? Add Tremblers and Goggles by Rank to the dozen other LPs they released in the 60 months previous, and the argument doesn't seem the least bit unreasonable.
© Mark Deming /TiVo