Feb 21, 2023
Web Exclusive
By Ian Rushbury
If you were making a list of bands who had prog rock tendencies, then Guided By Voices would be towards the bottom of the list. Maybe you’d better turn that list upside down as La La Land might not be the lo-fi version of Yes’ Tales from Topographic Oceans, but it might have aspirations to be.
There’s enough old school GBV tunes (“Another Day to Heal,” “Released Into Dementia,” “Ballroom Etiquette”) to keep the hardcore happy, but a few tunes here really push the envelope. Tracks such as “Slowly on the Wheel” almost collapse under the weight of all the bits and pieces that have been bolted onto it. Bizarrely, “Cousin Jackie” sounds a bit like Gentle Giant. Now that’s quite a thing.
Kudos for trying to expand a tried and tested formula, but a lot of La La Land sounds like dozens of fragments of tunes crazy glued together in a hurry. (www.guidedbyvoices.com)
Author rating: 6/10
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