Highlights: Islands (She Talks In Rainbows), Send To Celeste (And
The Cosmic Athletes), Noble Insect
The facts: last year we
had three new Guided By Voices releases, this year it’s just one. Which, if you
care to think about it, actually sounds like a good idea. Granted, I ended up
enjoying all three 2012 albums (last one in particular), but I also thought a little restraint could do them good: Robert Pollard and Tobin Sprout are good
songwriters, they are on a roll, they will drop the filler, and we will have
something like a seedless indie-pop watermelon on our hands…
Well, what a silly
thought.
Nothing, it seems, will
induce Pollard to go for consistency. Which maybe has a point: inconsistent
greatness, patchy flashes of brilliance are the very essence of Guided By
Voices. However, English Little League
does sound like a mild disappointment. You get the usual: catchy garage-rockers
(“w/Glass In Foot” is a quality Who outtake), gorgeous folk-pop masterpieces
(my favourite songs here), half-baked curios and oddities (some of which are
particularly expendable this time). But, and I fully realise the oddness of the
notion and the obviousness of the pun, this is too much of a Guided By Numbers
thing. Prepare to get your loyalty tested.
I did pretty well, even
though I would still argue that even their weakest 2012 album, Let’s Go Eat The Factory, has a slight edge over this one. Yes, Factory was erratic to the extreme, but
there was a songwriting spark I’m missing here. It had killer hooks, which are
in relatively short supply on English
Little League. Make no mistake, it is still classic Guided By Voices: it’s
just that the songs could be a little more inspired. So maybe they should take a break
after all. Inconceivable though it may sound.
7/10
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