The point is that Universe Room has something for any GBV fan. It shows that the band is exactly where they want to be: not repeating themselves but never losing touch with what makes them Guided by Voices. This is a band that does its own thing on its own terms, never caring what anyone else is doing, and Universe Room is the perfect showcase of that.
It was 33 years ago that Robert Pollard recorded what was almost the last Guided by Voices album, Same Place The Fly Got Smashed, which would have been a complete travesty to music. Now you can go to your favorite local record store and buy a new reissue of this album via Scat Records, the first label that truly believed in Bob and co.
The Guided By Voices archive resembles a murmuration by now with thousands of melodies and ideas flocking together to create a singular movement, in which individual elements matter less than the beauty created by the entire whole. Nowhere To Go But Up is a minor, but essential, part of this greater entity.
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.
