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''Earthquake Glue'' is the 14th record by Dayton, Ohio rock group Guided by Voices. Working titles for the album included "Model Prisoners of the 5 Sense Realm", "Live Like Kings Forever", and "All Sinners Welcome". Some copies of ''Earthquake Glue'' contained a golden ticket; people with a golden ticket were entitled to a free copy of the anthology box set ''Hardcore UFOs: Revelations, Epiphanies and Fast Food in the Western Hemisphere''. - Wikipedia

Given that Robert Pollard has always worn his Pete Townshend influence on his sleeve-he once confessed to me that everything he'd ever written probably had some Who-like component-it's been tempting of late to cast Guided by Voices albums in a similar light. Was 2000's fussed-over, Ric Ocasek-produced, Do the Collapse Pollard's Quadrophenia? Was 2001's boozy divorce chronicle Isolation Drills his The Who by Numbers? 2002's big-beat opus Universal Truths and Cycles his Who's Next?

Who, um, the hell knows? Because Earthquake Glue breaks stride, sounding like, well, not much anything except GBV. Specifically, old-school GBV; not the "lo-fi song snippets" GBV, but the stylistically hop-scotching GBV. So on the one hand, you get undeniably radio-friendly tracks like the synth-laden pop of "Mix Up the Satellite" and the chiming/anthemic "My Kind of Soldier," which contrast with the murky prog-boogie of "I'll Replace You With Machines" and the baroque-flavored "A Trophy Mule in Particular." A pair of cuts do nod towards classic Who, actually: the rock operetta-ish "Secret Star" and the dramatic, power chord-laden "Dirty Water." But those are but two out of 15.

In other words, the usual critical parlor games don't apply-anecdotal evidence that, despite its mercurial nature, Earthquake Glue may ultimately come to be regarded alongside mid '90s GBV benchmarks Bee Thousand and Alien Lanes. It's always tough for an artist to compete with his own back catalog, much less the back catalogs of his musical heroes. As it stands now, though, this is the most diverse and across-the-board fun GBV release in years.