by Dana Poland (@danazsz)
Guided By Voices has had a very busy forty years, though their thirty-seven albums only prove that you can have quantity without wavering quality. Welshpool Frillies arrived almost exactly six months to the day after their last album, La La Land, after a prolific run of eight albums in the last three years. While fitting in well among GBV’s discography, it stands out – unlike other recent GBV releases, which were recorded at Magic Door Studios, this album was largely recorded in a basement studio in Brooklyn. While the pandemic forced band members to individually record most of their instruments in separate cities for their recent records, they band joined producer Travis Harrison to record Welshpool Frillies together and live to tape. This, along with its post-punky riffs and lo-fi texture, gives the record a fresh quality, setting it apart from other post-90s Guided By Voices records.
Welshpool Frillies shifts away from the band’s recent flirtation with dense prog rock stylings in favor of a nostalgic mid-90s GBV sound, weaving together experimental and psychedelic elements over an indie rock fuzz. “Why Won’t You Kiss Me” exemplifies this shift, alternating between a driving, metronomic beat in the verses and resonant, droning choruses embedded with a melodic riff. The tracks hover between subgenres but do so seamlessly. While the verses in “Don’t Blow Your Dream Job” epitomize early 80s post-punk, “Chain Dance” features twangy finger-picked guitar and fuzzy vocals that create an ethereal folk sound together. “Rust Belt Boogie” combines these two styles, layering a jittery tambourine over the electric guitar’s sharp, invigorating tone. “Meet The Star” contains an ascending bass line that wavers from dark to light, opening with a heavy, cutting rhythm that brightens into an exhilarating melody. This light and airy sound is sustained through “Cruisers’ Cross” but drops back down to a hardened rumble in “Romeo Surgeon”.
The lyrics are introspective, though largely metaphorical and abstract, each verse proving only a glimpse into the narrative. “Better Odds,” one of the album’s more poignant and melancholic tracks, painfully begs “Would you kiss a snake if I held it? / You caused that earthquake, yeah I felt it” in a profoundly relatable account of heartbreak and loss of trust. The laconic “Welshpool Frillies,” on the other hand, demonstrates the band’s ability to convey emotions through instrumentation alone.
Welshpool Frillies strikes a perfect balance between uniqueness and cohesiveness. Across its fifteen remarkably meticulous tracks, the band draws from an array of influences, including post-punk, experimental, and psychedelic rock, while also playing homage to GBV’s own mid-90s discography. Each song is captivating, detailed, and fresh, cementing Welshpool Frillies as one of Guided By Voices’ most exceptional releases.