Dance of Gurus

Back in the mid '00s, when Guided By Voices called it quits after a farewell tour, there was not much chance that I thought that in 2022 I'd be extremely enthusiastic over a recent single of theirs. Not that it surprised me terribly when they eventually canceled the breakup, reunited with the "classic" lineup (2012), split up again (2014), and then reconfigured (2016) with ex-Cobra Verde guitar slinger Doug Gillard, who'd done his time in the Mag Earwhig edition of the band way back when. No, what confounds me is just how many albums they've put out since 2016 (that'd be 12; yes, 12!) and just how compelling of a listen they still are. Put simply, can a band fronted by a man in his sixties release 12 albums in five/six years and really be on top of their game? It seems that the answer is yes.

Until very recently, I'd been away from GBV for a while -- since 2004 -- but what sucked me back into the Pollard-verse was my intrigue over the constant barrage of setlists that I'd see posted. 50 songs. 60 songs. Once even 100 songs in a night. A GBV-fanatic friend of mine told me a few years ago that even he was starting to get lost at their shows and that he maybe knew 30 of the 50 songs he'd heard them play one night in Philly in 2018. 

So I made myself a playlist of a recent late 2021 GBV setlist, and then I added a couple songs from another recent set. It's here if you want to dig in. I certainly did. For the last three weeks, it's about all I've been listening to.

And I'm blown away. Newer songs flow into old ones and they all sound somehow like the same band on a remarkable bender of consistency. Melody, hooks, urgency, dynamics, and a Who-ish roar have always been Pollard staples -- why I got into them way back when, as a matter of fact -- and they are everywhere on the latest album, the awkwardly titled: It's Not Them. It Couldn't Be Them. It is Them!

But I'll let you dig through that entire record on your own time. I'm here to go on a bit about one particular GBV single from that album: "Dance of Gurus." 

It starts simply and repetitively -- a little like the feel of their late-'90s hit "Teenage FBI" to my ears. "What'll I do with you, you do with me?" gets repeated a lot -- yes, a little like "Someone tell me why..." in "Teenage FBI" -- and there's a homeless man too. He wants a Big Mac, wants to party, and throws a haymaker, like... a winner, Pollard tells us. But, then, at 1:25 or so, that part of the song ends, never to be heard from again (and, yes, maybe just when you were beginning to wonder whether you were getting tired of the repetition), and the band ups the ante. They launch into a brief, urgent bridge where drummer Kevin March's snare-reinforced cymbal crashes perfectly accent Pollard's vocal about "the legend of the untamed American West." Then there's a brief rumble of drums before they cut out in favor of 12 seconds of cowbell over a Doug Gillard guitar riff that is so hooky that other bands would base a whole song on it. 

But they don't.

And we haven't even gotten to the best part yet.

At 1:51, everything changes. Mark Shue's bass briefly steps to the fore, and Pollard speaks (yes, in an accent from the, er, British side of Dayton):

"It's the dance of gurus. Collapsed in laughter. We've had our followers and friends. <dramatic pause> And the homeless man says, 'Yeah, headed home.'"

Is it the gurus who are "collapsed in laughter," or the band? I'm not sure; you aren't either. (I even think the line may be: "You're headed home," for that matter).

Bob leaves us to ponder all of those unanswerables at 2:10 as the whole damn lot of them slam back in to accompany a Gillard solo that is as cathartic as anything on Who's Next. 

And then POW! It's all gone. No slow fade here.

My god, what a song. I'm back in the GBV fold.

GBV fanatics will wonder why I ever wandered away. Me too. The rest of you who wandered with me ought to get back onboard, because, for fuck's sake, there's another album coming on March 4th! This band is on fire.

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