First, the numbers: "Surrender Your Poppy Field" is, by some counts, the 30th Guided By Voices album, the seventh since the current lineup featuring guitarists Doug Gillard and Bobby Bare Jr. solidified in 2017, and the first of 2020, with at least one more in the works. With solo albums and other releases, leader Bob Pollard, 62, has put out over 100 albums, working seemingly endless variations on British invasion/power pop/garage rock/psychedelic guitar rock for three decades.
"Surrender Your Poppy Field" ranges widely over its 15 songs, often tilting to heavy, trudging songs that are more Sabbath than Who. But it's got a handful of chiming anthems ("Physician"), several multipart brief suites ("Year of the Hard Hitter") and splashes of strings and keyboards ("Whoah Nelly"). Pollard's lyrics lean more on non sequiturs than coherence, but there may be some political frustration in accusatory songs such as "Stone Cold Moron" and "Man Called Blunder." Poppy Field isn't the best recent GBV album - I'd vote for last year's "Zeppelin Over China" or 2018's "Space Gun" - but it's a worthy addition to Pollard's vast canon.