The chatter is true: Guided By Voices have unveiled their 45th studio album, Speculation And Gossip. It follows March’s Crawlspace Of The Pantheon, and it is slated to land at the start of next year. The lead single “Designed For Use” is released today.
Pollard told Rolling Stone that Speculation And Gossip grew from his fixation with Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood and a swing toward surrealism. He explained that the band returned to remote tracking, with each member independently shaping his approach to tone, fidelity and instrumentation rather than playing together in a single room. He sought crisper separation between instruments, and a broader variety of song structures, musical styles and lyrical perspectives, while aiming for a brighter, less weighty overall mood than Crawlspace. For this record, he supplied a handful of genre references—post punk, pop, prog, psych or blends thereof.
Hear “Designed For Use” below.
TRACKLIST:
01 “My Cartoon”
02 “Satan And The New Temptations”
03 “Kicking Circles”
04 “Path Of The Razor”
05 “Designed For Use”
06 “Repenthouse”
07 “Light Through the Window”
08 “That’s The Kind Of Guy I Am”
09 “63 Cry Babies”
10 “Answer Asparagus”
11 “Mr Skull”
12 “Otherworldly Bathroom Fixtures”
13 “Stupid Question”
14 “All Things Decided”
15 “Town Of My Day”
16 “Solar Systems”
Speculation And Gossip is out 1/22/27 on Guided By Voices Inc. Pre-order it here.
