Guided By Voices: Let’s Go Eat the Factory

Label: Guided by Voices Inc.

After a handful of hit-or-miss releases both on his own and with various outfits, songwriter Robert Pollard blows the dust off the classic line-up of his original band, Guided by Voices, and starts the new year off right with 21 squalls of feedback-driven lo-fi pop. Dig it: The band's sound hearkens back to the days of Bee Thousand, before their stint on Matador hardened them into pop jewelry. A diamond in the rough? Absolutely. Although not as mind-blowing as some of their previous outings, Let's Go Eat The Factory has more than enough to recommend it, from the noisy opening track ("Laundry and Lasers," which sounds like it went straight to 4-track -- and was recorded in an abandoned subway tunnel) to the propulsive, multi-faceted "Spiderfighter" and the symphonic pop of "Hang Mr. Kite." (The joyous "Unsinkable Fats Domino" takes me right back to the mid-'90s.) Surprisingly, the star of the show is not Pollard, but guitarist and keyboardist Tobin Sprout, whose solo compositions ("Spiderfighter," "Waves") easily deliver the frosting on the cake.