Riddle me this: Guided by Voices’s greatest strength is their ability to take you through a pop tour-de-force in a time compact way with their short (but never miniscule) songs that vary in style, commonly showing influence from ’60s pop rock, punk rock, post-punk, jangle pop, and sometimes even folk. Listening to an album like Bee Thousand is like getting a quick history lesson on Robert Pollard’s history as a pop music lover, and it’s sure to ring a chord with any other pop fan that listens.

Riddle me this: Knowing this strength, this distinctive strength that has got your band recognized and praised that you’ve kept for about eight years, why would Guided by Voices think they’d benefit from a bombastic Oasis-level production of ear-splitting guitars that drown out every other instrument, with the exception of Pollard’s equally unpleasant roar that sounds as if he’s singing into an electric fan?

Furthermore, why do you think Guided by Voices chose to get rid of their eclecticism that kept their pop assault interesting and endearingly schizophrenic, surprising the listener that never knew what would hit them next, and made their songs predictable, mediocre alternative pop rock? Lastly, why do you think, after getting rid of the varied song styles that made the album entertaining for its entire playing time, that this is the ideal time to do what you’ve never done before and make all of your songs a normal two to three-minute length while also increasing the total number of songs on your album?

Under the Bushes Under the Stars is a morbidly obese hour-long crash and burn alternative rock album filled with extremely loud generic-sounding grunge guitars that never stop strumming the same repetitive hooks for even a second of the entire bloated album and a vocalist that makes it perfectly clear (if he hasn’t already) that his head has gotten so big he has no idea where he’s going. The only part of Guided by Voices’s once lovable eccentricity that still remains is their lyrics, and even those have never been plainer and less distinct than they are on Under the Bushes Under the Stars. If you’re looking for a headache, look no further than this chaotic, tuneless mess.