A Playlist of Poppy Guided By Voices Songs, Plus Links & Likes

A poppy GBV playlist, an in-studio Black Belt Eagle Scout performance, interviews with Hilton Als & Sarah Viren, new fiction from Percival Everett, and more

Jun 21, 2023

Guided By Voices is the only band I ever fell in love with, seeing almost 50 of the band’s shows over a three year period in the mid-’90s. Like many great love affairs, we eventually broke up and became just friends around 1998, but I continue to be amazed at the band’s continually varied and deep discography.

Bob Pollard is known for his prolific songwriting, often putting out at least two albums of new music a year, but his songwriting (and performing) range is also profound. His music ranges from heavy rock to power pop to piano ballads, while remaining lyrically and sonically interesting.

This week’s playlist focuses on the band’s poppier songs. Do you have a favorite GBV (or Bob Pollard) pop song?

From the Fundamental Champs to Tammy and the Amps - Poppy Guided By Voices (93 songs, 2 hours and 56 minutes)

Largehearted Likes:

#1000WordsofSummer
Once again, Jami Attenberg is inspiring writers to write.
Libraries & Lemonade
This summer, For The People invites you to join us in defending public libraries by talking with your neighbors. Hand out free lemonade to your community, and spread the word about what makes public libraries so great.
The publicist who sent Phillies baseball cards inside a review copy of a book
You know your audience.

Largehearted Links

Anna Dorn’s Guide To Must-Read Sapphic Novels
Making a sapphic reading list for Pride Month feels like something I can only do somewhat ironically. I don’t believe in being proud of anything, especially not one’s sexuality, which frankly is a mundane preference and I think we’d all benefit if it were treated as such.
How the Design Collective Hipgnosis Reinvented the Album Cover
In the heyday of the record sleeve, music was a much more aesthetic pursuit. Few people understood this better than Aubrey “Po” Powell and Storm Thorgerson of design collective Hipgnosis, whose iconic, pop-surrealist cover artworks vivified the trippy rock albums of the 60s and 70s.
The first part of a new Percival Everett short story
Black Belt Eagle Scout’s performance and interview at KEXP
The American Prison Writing Archive
The Archive is built on the belief that incarcerated people are always the leading experts on practices and policy of legal confinement’s effects. They can offer a generative index of state and civil society’s (mis)managing of criminal legal systems and public safety. APWA writers are spokespeople for the challenges, aspirations, hopes, and enduring resistance and resilience of imprisoned people.
Fluxblog’s New Pornographers Universe Playlist
This week’s playlist is THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS UNIVERSE, a collective career retrospective for the Canadian supergroup including the solo works of AC Newman, Destroyer, Neko Case, Kathryn Calder, and Todd Fancey, plus other bands featuring New Pornos mainstays.
Sarah Viren interviewed by Matt Bell about her memoir
It’s strange, but even after writing this whole book I’m still not sure what we mean by capital-T Truth and I waver back and forth about whether I believe it exists at all—or, if it does, if it’s accessible to us, given our persnickety subjectivities.
New music from Slowdive
Film critic Anna Bogutskaya on her first book, Unlikeable Female Characters
What does it mean to be likeable?
I think it means nothing and everything all at once. It’s such amorphous terminology, that it can be weaponized against any woman at any point. I’m talking about fictional characters and real-life people here. The rules and the goalposts keep changing in real time in fiction as they do in real life.
The album and film series Afghan Music In Exile: Mashhad 2022, which highlights Afghan musicians in exile in Iran
This podcast interview with Hilton Als
Sam Fragoso: Joan Didion, more than just about any writer from the 20th century, is returned to again and again. Why do you think that is?
Hilton Als: Because of the honesty of the voice. When you, as she would say, put your cards on the table, you’re risking the humiliation of seeing your name in print. I would say it’s the humiliation of seeing yourself. When you risk that, you take your chances.