Guided By Voices – The Bears for Lunch

Usually when a treasured act reforms, they hit the road, give fans an opportunity to hear the hits, and then go back to whatever it was they were doing beforehand, bank balances replenished and legacy topped up. Guided By Voices do things differently, with The Bears for Lunch their third album of 2012 – that’s 61 songs in 11 months (plus two solo albums from bandleader Robert Pollard to boot). Yet somehow, quantity hasn’t totally eclipsed quality.

Opener King Arthur the Red gets everything right, its crunchy guitar solos setting a powerhouse pace. But Pollard never met an idea he didn’t consider worth committing to tape, and disposable tracks like Have a Jug could have done with spending a little longer at draft stage. In a parallel universe, Guided By Voices spent 2012 lapping up praise for one awesome album; instead, they settled for a trio of pretty good ones.