Guided By Voices released their 40th album, Strut of Kings, to much acclaim. Bandleader Robert Pollard and the longest-running GBV lineup of members Doug Gillard, Kevin March, Mark Shue, and Bobby Bare Jr. have recorded an incredible 17 albums since 2017.

Today, the band is excited to announce the 18th Guided By Voices album in 10 years, aptly titled Universe Room. Packing a vast mix of energy levels and previously undiscovered constellations of sounds into 17 diverse tracks over a compact space of less than 40 minutes, the new record ventures into truly surprising territory, where barely any song segments are revisited, typical choruses are a thing of the past, and fidelity daringly shifts between lo-fi and hi-fi.

The unique audio palette certainly wasn’t unintentional on the parts of bandleader Robert Pollard and stalwart producer Travis Harrison. “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,” says Pollard. “I trimmed down the songs so that there wasn’t a lot of repetition, so you get a lot of sections that happen only once or twice.”

The unprecedented approach to the expansive songwriting adds to the surprising new frontiers of aural sensations from Pollard and members Gillard, March, Shue, and Bare Jr. “I wanted to get a little more sonic diversity for this album,” says Pollard, “So I asked each member of the band to record all the instruments for one song and I did three songs myself.” 

March’s contribution, opener “Driving Time”, kicks off the record with the nighttime chirping of crickets before adding layers of guitar and percussion, creating a spectral and distinctive new atmosphere for GBV, which is echoed by Gillard’s spacey off-the-cuff guitar work in the outro of lead single “Fly Religion”.