The Releases: Sweating the Plague (LP—GBVi, 2019) / Heavy Like the World (Single—GBVi, 2019)
While working through this year-long endeavor, I’ve frequently referred back to a 2021 Catalog Crawl piece that I wrote on Guided by Voices’ then-current discography of thirty-five LPs. In some ways, that piece has been an informative refresher on albums that have a tendency to blur together into a fuzzily-defined body of work. And in the grand scheme of GBV’s expansive catalog, there hasn’t been a ton of movement among my rankings and ratings in the four years that have since passed.
Sure, there have been a handful of ‘risers’ within the ranks. For instance, my opinions on GBV’s pre-Propeller era have come into much clearer focus—to the point of where the band’s 1987 debut, Devil Between My Toes, has rocketed from the back third of their catalog to a comfortable position within the top third. But, at the end of the day, The GBV Project has been far more an exercise in confirmation, as opposed to revelation.
However, these past two weeks have yielded another minor surprise, in the form of two albums from 2019: Warp and Woof and Sweating the Plague. The former could (somewhat cynically) be viewed as Bob Pollard’s attempt at shooting fish in a barrel—pulling twenty-four brief tracks from a series of four EPs into a single cohesive listen. And while it never quite reaches greatness—after all, there is a far superior compilation of four Guided by Voices EPs that does—it’s a wholly worthwhile listen. In the aforementioned Catalog Crawl piece, I ranked it at #19.
Conversely, Sweating the Plague is a record that doesn’t seem to have been crafted with the ‘classic era purist’ in mind. Featuring only a dozen tracks—including a pair that nearly reach the five-minute mark—Plague is the closest that Guided by Voices has ever come to a full-album indulgence of Pollard’s well-documented affinity for progressive rock. And while I had some complimentary things to say about it in the Catalog Crawl article, that didn’t keep Plague from landing at #24—in the proximity of records that I’d describe as “somewhat forgettable.” But, against the expectations that I carried into this stretch of The GBV Project, I can confidently say that I’ve arrived at a surprising conclusion: Sweating the Plague is a better record than Warp and Woof.
Admittedly, I’m generally not a big fan of ‘prog’ rock. I listened to plenty of Rush as a pre-teen, but any lingering interest that I have in them is almost entirely borne out of nostalgia. Several years back, while scouring the library systems of Washington and Clackamas counties in a pre-streaming (for me) era, I ripped copies of all the so-called essential albums by King Crimson, Yes, Jethro Tull, and early Genesis. Of these, the only one to really land in my wheelhouse was In the Court of the Crimson King—aided, at least in part, by my enduring love of the Mellotron. And sure, I like Pink Floyd as much as the next reasonable person, but give me The Piper at the Gates of Dawn over Wish You Were Here or Animals (both very good records) any day of the week. Yes, of Bob Pollard’s oft-cited “four P’s,” prog comes in well behind pop, psych, and punk in my estimation.
But while Sweating the Plague is often described as GBV’s prog record, is it really? The cinematic impulses of progressive rock had long lingered at the fringes of Bob Pollard’s catalog—both with and without Guided by Voices. All the way back to Devil Between My Toes—and certainly by the point of Self-Inflicted Aerial Nostalgia—anyone with a keen ear for such things could tell that Pollard was more than a casual prog tourist. And even when the song lengths didn’t bear this out, the whimsy and grandeur of peak-era tracks like “The Goldheart Mountaintop Queen Directory” and “Portable Men’s Society” displayed a clear affinity for prog-like theatrics.
Still, what Sweating the Plague does represent is a version of Guided by Voices that wholly embraced pushing against the parameters of their most celebrated records. And yes, some of this is relatively subtle: more usage of studio “frills” like reverb (gasp!); a clever instrumental fade-out on “Immortals”; a rare GBV gatefold cover; and a pairing of acoustic instruments with more overtly-processed sounds—both the Moog synthesizer and my beloved Mellotron (or at least a damned-accurate approximation of one) make memorable appearances on the closing “Sons of the Beard.”
Elsewhere, the prog rock elements are more apparent in a number of songs that not only seem like epics in contrast to GBV’s typical fare, but that also indulge in unexpected left turns and multiple motifs. Despite the fact that it contains only half as many tracks as Warp and Woof, it could reasonably be argued that Sweating the Plague displays twice the range. And—because these things really matter in the world of Guided by Voices—it’s important to point out that Plague arguably houses stronger hooks than its more ‘pop presenting’ counterpart.
The melodic qualities of Sweating the Plague are best observed in its two strongest tracks. The first of these, “Your Cricket is Rather Unique,” originally appeared as the B-side to Zeppelin Over China‘s “You Own the Night.” Interestingly enough, while “Cricket” was penned by Bob Pollard, he actually cedes the lead vocal to drummer Kevin March. While Pollard had done this before on B-sides, it was a surprising move when used on one of the album’s most melodically rich tracks.
But while “Cricket” is a genuinely excellent song, it’s a track that might slip by relatively-unnoticed on early listens. The same can’t be said for Plague‘s highlight: “Heavy Like the World.” Instantly more memorable than anything from Warp and Woof—or any other then-recent GBV record—it’s a rare latter-day Guided by Voices track that wouldn’t sound hopelessly outclassed when placed alongside the band’s most beloved anthems. But aside from some uncharacteristically-treated vocals, there isn’t much about the song that is all that ‘proggy.’ Instead, it’s simply a great example of the power pop that GBV had specialized in from the get-go.
So while the changes to the core Guided by Voices sound were largely superficial, Sweating the Plague succeeds because it was willing to alter the approach in a way that Warp and Woof didn’t. Warp had gone back to Pollard’s most trusted methodology, but when compared to the records that GBV had built their legend on, it couldn’t help but come off as lacking. In contrast, the subtle shifts of Sweating the Plague were enough to rekindle the kind of genuine artistic exploration that had truly made those early GBV records so damned vital.
But while it’s tempting to encourage Pollard to keep exploring in order to keep GBV interesting, forty-some albums into their career, we still know what he’s best at. After all, if you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you already know that a new Guided by Voices album is coming out at the end of this month. And if you know that, chances are you’ve already heard the first single. It’s two-and-a-half-minutes of unapologetically hook-forward pop. And it’s a fucking banger.
Rating: Sweating the Plague (7.4) / Heavy Like the World (★★★★)
*Singles are star-rated by their A-side; albums and EPs use the “Russman Reviews” scale.
Bob-ism of the Week: “High in your window is falling / Your cricket is rather unique / Comforts for the mystery / The elements of history are weak” (“Your Cricket is Rather Unique”)
Next Week: For the second year in a row, Guided by Voices release three new studio records.
