Guided By Voices - The Bears for Lunch (New CD)

2012 release, the third album this year from the prolific and recently reunited indie band. This is their third album of 2012, in case you had lost count. Many bands struggle to release three albums in their career, never mind three in one year. Let”s Go Eat the Factory and Class Clown Spots a UFO garnered four-star reviews and amen”s from the faithful. The Bears for Lunch might top them both. From the opening track, ”King Arthur the Red,” with it”s full-throated riffs, slam-tastic drums and even some show-off lead guitar shredding, it”s evident that GBV Mach II may just now be hitting it”s stride. The progression is not dissimilar to the one the band made from Alien Lanes to it”s 1996 high-water mark Under the Bushes, Under the Stars, both in terms of longer, more fleshed-out songs and a semi-pro approach (so to speak) to recording fidelity.

• King Arthur the Red