Class Clown Spots A UFO

2nd GBV album recorded with the reunited lineup of Robert Pollard, Tobin Sprout, Mitch Mitchell, Greg Demos, and Kevin Fennell. Original release date was to be 5/22/2012 but it was pushed back due to the success of Let’s Go Eat The Factory.

Original Release Notes:
The new Guided by Voices album is the best thing the band has recorded since the last album by the legendary Dayton, Ohio, rockers. That’s not meant facetiously: the last thing Guided by Voices did was the rapturously received Let’s Go Eat the Factory, and Class Clown Spots a UFO ups the ante raised by that stellar effort, both in terms of recording fidelity (boring!) and songcraft (not boring!) One could argue there’s more depth and variety here than on Alien Lanes, that there are better songs here than on Bee Thousand, but that’s an argument no one’s ever going to win, at least definitively. And this album is a win, by any definition.

Class Clown is classic GBV, starting with the head-body-head combination of “He Rises (Our Union Bellboy),” “Blue Babbleship Bay,” and “Forever Until It Breaks” before finishing you off with the title track, a ridiculously catchy, melodically complex, shot-through-with-melancholia song that serves as a sadder and wiser riposte to XTC’s “Making Plans for Nigel” as performed by The Hollies.