Guided by Voices announce 41st album, ‘Universe Room’ (hear “Fly Religion”)

The indefatigable Guided by Voices have announced their 41st album, titled Universe Room, which will be out February 7 via GBV Inc. It features what is now the longest-lasing lineup of GBV ever (Robert Pollard, Doug Gillard, Kevin March, Mark Shue and Bobby Bare Jr) and was made with longtime producer Travis Harrison. “I wanted to get a little more sonic diversity for this album,” says bandleader Robert Pollard, “So I asked each member of the band to record all the instruments for one song and I did three songs myself. For the rest of the songs, we used a lot of different approaches to the recording of both the instruments and the vocals.”

Pollard adds, “I wanted to create, hopefully, an experience, kind of a wild ride, where the listener would want to hear it multiple times in order to grasp all the sections and fields of sound to discover something new with each listen.”

The first single is “Fly Religion,” which has a little crunchy new wave mixed into the band’s signature anthemic style. You can listen to that below.

Guided by Voices currently have no live dates scheduled but that is likely to change soon. Stay tuned.

GBV’s 40th album, Strut of Kings, was released in June.

[embedded content]

Universe Room
Driving Time
I Couldn’t See The Light
I Will Be A Monk
The Great Man
Clearly Aware
Dawn Believes
Play Shadows
Fly Religion
The Well Known Soldiers
Hers Purple
Independent Animal
19th Man To Fly An Airplane
Elfin Flower With Knees
Fran Cisco
Aluminum Stingray Girl
Aesop Dreamed of Lions
Everybody’s a Star