Guided By Voices Earthquake Glue CD

This is one monster album. The songs are of the highest caliber, the band's playing has a holistic grasp of rock dynamism, and the whole thing flows like butter. This release comes as a numbered 25,000 limited edition digipak with free sticker, and 25 randomly selected copies will contain 'golden tickets' for a free 5CD + DVD box set retrospective. 'Great music seems to come pouring out of some people - Mozart, the young Rossini, Paul McCartney, Prince, and now Robert Pollard'. 15 tracks. Matador. 2003.

The first 25,000 copies are packaged in a numbered limited-edition digipak with a sticker.
Guided By Voices: Robert Pollard, Doug Gillard, Nate Farley, Tim Tobias, Kevin March.
Additional personnel includes: The Esther Dennis Middle School 8th Grade Band.
Recorded at Cro Magnon Enterprises, Dayton, Ohio.
Personnel: Todd Tobias (keyboards).
Introduction by: Esther Dennis Middle School 8th Grade Band.
Photographer: Ana Luisa Morales.
For those who love the idea of Guided By Voices a bit more than the reality, it's sometimes hard not to be frustrated with Robert Pollard, a scattershot genius who is equally well-defined by both halves of that description. GBV leader Pollard is a startlingly gifted and prolific songwriter and musician, but he also displays either an inability or a disinterest in separating his wheat from his chaff, as anyone who has tried to plow through his relentless barrage of side projects has doubtless noticed. Which is why Earthquake Glue is such a pleasant surprise -- it may well be the most consistent and satisfying Guided By Voices album to date, and if its potent rock crunch is bettered by 2001's superb Isolation Drills, this comes close enough to make any fan pummel his air guitar with glee. While the sharper focus and tight set list of Earthquake Glue is impressive, just as important is how good Guided By Voices sounds as a band these days; while usually regarded as little more than Pollard's backing group, this edition of GBV has become tight, emphatic, and joyously powerful after several years on the road and in the studio, with the guitars of Doug Gillard and Nate Farley and the rhythm section of Tim Tobias and Kevin March giving the tunes all the smarts and twice the muscle their creator could have hoped for. And while Earthquake Glue lacks the clunky lo-fi ambience of Bee Thousand or Alien Lanes, these songs suggest Pollard and his collaborators have been able to take the spontaneity and adventure of those tracks and graft them into a better structured and more satisfying framework. If Earthquake Glue isn't a masterpiece, it's as close as this band can be expected to get, and is the rare Guided By Voices effort that's imaginative enough for longtime loyalists and tight enough for dabblers at the same time. ~ Mark Deming
Over the course of so many albums that all but the most rabid fans have lost track, Robert Pollard has fashioned himself an unlikely niche as the Grand Old Man of lo-fi alternative rock. With an uncanny ability to channel every '60s pop act from Chad & Jeremy to the Music Machine, Guided By Voices continues to spit out one ragged collection of Brian Wilson-class gems after another. Though Pollard is as legendary for his inconsistency as he is for his melodic genius, with EARTHQUAKE GLUE his band delivers one the most consistent efforts in its catalog.
Kicking off with what sounds like a lost "A Quick One, While He's Away"-style Who mini-rock-opera, the album proceeds to display shining examples of all the patented GBV styles. There's straight-outta-'95 Merge Records-esque indie rock ("Useless Inventions") alongside Roky Erikson-approved acid-casualty fare, complete with druggy, melancholy vocals and inscrutable lyrics ("The Best Of Jill Hives"). The big surprise here, though, is that the band actually sounds "professional." Luckily, EARTHQUAKE GLUE is still a GBV record, so the boys never let pesky proficiency get in the way of the songs' immediacyUncut (9/03, p.102) - 3 stars out of 5 - "...Crafted, completed stadium anthems..."
Magnet (9/03, p.102) - "...Opener 'My Kind of Soldier' and album centerpiece 'The Best of Jill Hives' are products of a newfound less-is-more aesthetic..."
Mojo (Publisher) (9/03, pp.98-9) - 4 stars out of 5 - "...A nuggety fusion of classic rock and surrealistic pop....EARTHQUAKE GLUE exudes an unshakeable ring of confidence..."