The cover is kind of shit though. Whatās going on with all those borders?
I think the next few album covers are really great though.
Crystal Nuns Cathedral must be the straightest, most MOR record under the Guided By Voices name. I did think the tunes worked a lot better in the live footage from the time though:
Aggressively fine. Perhaps a 6/10.
Never Mind The List is a very good song. Really like the strings and drums in Climbing A Ramp. Not much else captured my attention on the first two plays but nothing terrible either.
1 Like
Hadnt realised the strings were mostly Dougās doing. Big fan of them generally over this run of albums
1 Like
Itās Not Them, It Couldnāt etc:
This is actually pretty solid, but it does get quite samey as it goes on. Spanish Coin is good, enjoyed track 2 and a few others as well. Nice strings, nice production. I might come back to this one actually! Feel like itās worth revisiting in isolation outside of the listening club fatigue.
One of my local record shops has had a copy of this sitting in the racks unsold since release, I could be tempted to grab it next time they have a shop-wide sale but weāll see.
PS. Razor Bug is a completely inoffensive throwback to their lo-fi days. Itās fine!
3 Likes
Yeah, I donāt really get why they seemingly lump together the similar-vibe tracks together on this album. Feel like the first three tracks are, like, kinda epic āsinglesā type tracks. The next three are atmospheric slow-burners. Then thereās a run of three quirky onesā¦ Itās objectively not a boring album. But that structure promotes the idea that the similar tracks are just a variation on a theme of each other.
1 Like
Forgot to post my updated leaderboard. Thems x3 slots in at 23rd out of 34:
Summary
- Bee Thousand
- Under The Bushes Under The Stars
- Propeller
- Alien Lanes
- Isolation Drills
- The Bears for Lunch
- Class Clown Spots a UFO
- Surrender Your Poppy Field
- Space Gun
- Warp & Woof
- How Do You Spell Heaven?
- Universal Truths & Cycles
- Do The Collapse
- Vampire on Titus
- Mag Earwhig!
- August By Cake
- Please Be Honest
- Motivational Jumpsuit
- Half Smiles of the Decomposed
- Earthquake Glue
- Earth Man Blues
- Styles We Paid For
- Itās Not Them. It Couldnāt Be Them. It Is Them!
- Sweating The Plague
- Self Inflicted Aerial Nostalgia
- Cool Planet
- Same Place the Fly Got Smashed
- Devil Between My Toes
- Mirrored Aztec
- Zeppelin Over China
- English Little League
- Letās Go Eat The Factory
- Forever Since Breakfast
- Sandbox
Self Inflicted must be one of the albums Iāll differ on most from the average, solid 8 for me
1 Like
we unhelpfully have two GBV threads @primitivesludge (one general, one listening club) - apols
2 Likes
So Iām with @Rodion here - I like CNC a lot! Probably even my favourite post-Poppy Field release (still havenāt heard the 2023 stuff yet, though).
I can understand why it might not be everyoneās cup of tea, itās a very āstraightforwardā sounding album (although I wouldnāt go as far as calling it MOR) with the weirdness dialled down to zero, but itās just a very strong set of catchy, unpretentious rock tunes. This album is a good advertisement for the slimmed-down, dozen-songs-per-record approach.
Itās probably got a lot in common sound wise with Isolation Drills IMO, which got a surprisingly lukewarm response on here IIRC?
GOD DAMN IT
1 Like
Crystal Nuns Cathedral!
Iāve said before how straight ahead I think this one is. Itās a concise 12-tracker of fairly basic indie rock, really. I do, however, have a bit of a personal soft spot for it as it came out when I was going through some exciting, positive life stuff and I spun it a lot. Happy to dig in once moreā¦
Eye City is quite an ominous opener. Itās like slowcore GBV with some cool lyrics that touch on lots of old Bob lore: āI am cyclops overthrown. Perhaps Iāll learn not to go back to Eye City.ā Great production and instrumentation so far and Bob sounds in good voice. Re-develop has a real REM vibe ā especially in the guitars. Again, itās a slow one. But again, it sounds great and Bob is offering some pretty dense lyrics.
Climbing A Ramp opens with some nice string work but evolves into a kind of slow hard rock thing you might imagine on Sweating The Plague. Itās OK. Never Mind The List is just slightly a bit perkier than what weāve had so far but itās a bit of a so-so single. Probably the most MOR moment so far. The vocals are a bit dry. Birds In The Pipe has more of a classic GBV album track vibe and a better vocal performance from Bob. But, again, itās a slow tune. And sadly it doesnāt really go anywhere.
Come North Together is another fairly MOR rock tune. Dougās outro is nice but it fades out a bit quickly. Thatās the most interesting moment! Forced To Sea is the albumās only real experimental moment and is a bit of a call back to Next Sea Level from Surrender Your Poppy Field. It reminds me a bit of Lungfish and is probably the albumās highpoint with both a cool ominous droney intro and a decent second half of full band stuff. Bob sounds excellent, here. It also fades really well into Huddled. But Huddled itself doesnāt amount to much.
Excited Ones is a decent single. It doesnāt really reach the highs of the real hits from this line-up, but itās one of the stronger songs on here. Eyes Of Your Doctor feels a bit like filler to me. Mad River Man is much better. Itās like a great example of what this album can deliver ā with itās slow building verses and catchy upbeat choruses. Closer, Crystal Nunās Cathedral, is more of a power pop thing that is quite different to anything else here. Itās a bit meat and potatoes with its three chord Blitzkrieg Bop vibe, but itās pleasant enough. Not the best closing track from this era by any stretch.
So, yeah, this isnāt a bad LP. Itās just a bit dry and basic compared to the more sprawling and fun records theyād done during the previous year. Itās concise. And cohesive. But pretty far from essential.
3 Likes
Crystal Nuns Cathedral will probably end up bagging a solid eight from me, thoroughly enjoyed listening to it this week. I think I much prefer these more concise twelve song albums from the current lineup tbh.
The standouts:
Eye City - Bob seems to be fascinated with Cyclops, doesnāt he? This must be at least the fourth or fifth song of his which references them in some way? A brooding, ominous, magisterial way to open the album, though not entirely representative of what follows. Great strings from Doug G, plus I like whatever effect Travis applied to Bobās vocals here.
Re-Develop - my fave tune on the album! Great driving drums from Kevin March propels the track forward at a pace, coupled with the usual anthemic, huge choruses from Bob. Also home to some of the most interesting, quirkiest lyrics on the album, āOut from the nexus to plexus, The flower shop prints in invisible inkā.
Mad River Man - this wouldāve made for a better single than the so-so Never Mind The List IMO. A very strong tune melodically, the chorus here is probably the biggest earworm on the entire album. Also really like those menacing piano chords lurking just under the surface (I think Mark mentioned he added these after having listened to the Jaws soundtrack at the time!).
Crystal Nuns Cathedral - fantastic shortish burst of energetic power-pop to close things off, including a nice Doug solo right at the end.
3 Likes
First listen to Crystal Nuns Cathedral, and it marks a big change in my thinking about recent GBV ā¦ I used to think I wished post-Please Be Honest GBV albums were weirder and worse-recorded, but Crystal Nuns Cathedral made me wish it was a late 90s/very early 2000s Pollard solo album instead. Iām increasingly wondering if thatās what I want from the other onesā¦trick me into thinking they were in the Fading Captain series and Iād be trying to claim they were underrated
Other than that, itās like all the others, surprisingly good/musically pretty uninteresting at the same time.
One day, when Iāve exhausted all the Pollard eras I actually really like, I might come back to this and wonder how I could have overlooked it for so long
2 Likes
After all this time I start to fall behind! 
Only just listened to Is it Themā¦ and really quite enjoyed it, a pretty straightforward rock album which suited me fine. I will probably revisit. I will try and get to Crystal Nuns in the next couple of days.
3 Likes
lets crystallise our opinions with some polls
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
0
voters
- Eye City
- Re-Develop
- Climbing A Ramp
- Never Mind The List
- Birds In The Pipe
- Come North Together
- Forced To Sea
- Huddled
- Excited Ones
- The Eyes Of Your Doctor
- Mad River Man
- Crystal Nuns Cathedral
0
voters
Crystal Nuns Cathedral just about squeezes into the top half of my personal leaderboard, a respectable showing for a very decent album:
Summary
- Bee Thousand
- Under The Bushes Under The Stars
- Propeller
- Alien Lanes
- Isolation Drills
- The Bears for Lunch
- Class Clown Spots a UFO
- Surrender Your Poppy Field
- Space Gun
- Warp & Woof
- How Do You Spell Heaven?
- Universal Truths & Cycles
- Do The Collapse
- Vampire on Titus
- Mag Earwhig!
- Crystal Nuns Cathedral
- August By Cake
- Please Be Honest
- Motivational Jumpsuit
- Half Smiles of the Decomposed
- Earthquake Glue
- Earth Man Blues
- Styles We Paid For
- Itās Not Them. It Couldnāt Be Them. It Is Them!
- Sweating The Plague
- Self Inflicted Aerial Nostalgia
- Cool Planet
- Same Place the Fly Got Smashed
- Devil Between My Toes
- Mirrored Aztec
- Zeppelin Over China
- English Little League
- Letās Go Eat The Factory
- Forever Since Breakfast
- Sandbox
1 Like
Canāt remember if Iāve shared this before or not, but this an enjoyable quickfire attempt to rank all the GBV albums up to & including Itās Not Them. Fun video, his enthusiasm for the band is really infectious.
He did a very good ranking video for Deerhoof as well, IIRC.
1 Like
Only just remembered he placed Please Be Honest 2nd from bottom - I take it all back, screw this guy!! 
2 Likes
Only 2nd??
2 Likes