Guided By Voices

In the time it takes you to read this sentence, Robert Pollard has probably written another three songs. To say that the creative mastermind of Ohio psych-pop institution Guided by Voices is prolific would be the grossest of understatements: Ever since the former schoolteacher started the band in 1983 as an after-work hobby project with a revolving-door cast of drinking buddies, Pollard has released literally thousands of songs. Many of them went largely unheard until critics discovered 1994’s Bee Thousand and 1995’s Alien Lanes, records that masterfully condensed the melodic sugar rush of The Beatles and the anthemic majesty of The Who into 60-second Wire-sized morsels, and captured them on crude four-track recordings that bore the endearingly nostalgic patina of some long-lost cassette mixtape you found under the seat in your car. But just as soon as he had spawned a generation of lo-fi auteurs, Pollard fulfilled his latent arena-rock fantasies on 1999’s Ric Ocasek-produced Do the Collapse, before retiring the GBV name in 2004 to focus on myriad solo projects. Since reviving Guided by Voices in 2012, Pollard’s been making up for lost time, releasing no fewer than 20 albums of alternate-universe anthems over the following decade.