Just Announced: Guided By Voices' Tonics And Twisted Chasers May 01 2024
We're thrilled to add another of our all-time favorite bands, Guided By Voices, to the Superior Viaduct roster.
Originally released in 1996 as a limited fan-club pressing, Tonics And Twisted Chasers has always existed as an anomaly in Robert Pollard's vast discography. In many ways, the album serves as the tail of a creative comet that in just two years included the "classic line-up" trilogy of Bee Thousand, Alien Lanes, Under the Bushes, Under the Stars and countless singles that crammed endless hooks in their grooves.
This nineteen-song collaboration with guitarist Tobin Sprout could be interpreted as spontaneous sketches, late-night improvisations, ideas that blossomed later in the timeline, but as with anything in Pollard's orbit, its intention is clear when heard as a cohesive whole. The Pollard tenet that "less is more" is on full display here.
Using a primitive drum machine, Radio Shack effects, minimal instrumentation and the DIY spirit that guided them in the first place, Pollard and Sprout construct a masterpiece of pop that could only come from a basement in north Dayton, Ohio. Anyone in that hallowed era who happened upon it, kept it as a secret.
Available in limited edition color vinyl or standard black.