Album Review – All Goods Kids – A Tribute to Guided By Voices by Various Artists (2022) (Phonophore Records)
Perhaps the extra time the various lockdowns provided, enabled me to stumble upon more music, or perhaps more music was being made by artists / labels due to the same issue, but it just seems to me that there has been an increase in the number tribute albums of late. Time is often the initiator and hidrance of such projects.
All Goods Kids – A Tribute to Guided By Voices out of Phonophore Records, definitely feels like one of the best. Not just because of the plainly ‘loving’ way that the artists have treated the tracks of their favourite, but also because this Robert Pollard led outfit is more a fringe, ‘acquired taste’ and not the sort of general subject matter that such ‘labour of love compilations’ tend to focus upon.
For jangle-pop fans who like the music of the genre to be infused with an essence that is always slightly left of centre, there is something for everyone in this 28 track album that has been collated by Grand Lake, Michigans, Phonophore Records label.
Unsurprisingly, the subdued fuzzy power-pop that is so synonymous with the Guided By Voices aesthetic, is well represented via submissions by Jeremy Porter & The Tucos (Echoes Myron), Kill Surf City (Quality Of Armor) and Ryan Allen (Kid On A Ladder) and similarly the 80s college rock feel of the submissions by Harborcoat (The Other Place), Teutonosaur (The Best Of Jill Hives) and Popular Creeps (Game Of Pricks) also are among the most faithful to their brilliant overall vibe.
Treading further away from such faithful adaptations, are the 60s inflected, The Byrds style, jangled riffs lucidity of The Vapour Trails (14 Cheerleader Coldfront) and The Stick Arounds (The Girls Of Wild Strawberries), whereas the propensity for lo-fi, bedroom-pop that is making such in-roads within the modern jangle-pop genre is heard in the superlative submissions by All Over The Shop (Pendulum) and La La Delivery (As We Go Up, We Go Down).
I never thought I would say this about a tribute album, but the sheer eclectic nature of this release, covering so many facets of the jangle-pop genre, makes it one of my go to releases of 2022 so far and it is available on a free download, here!
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