No pretentiousness and no self-indulgence, please. “If you can’t say it all inside of a three-minute song, on a half-hour album, then forget it”, seems to be the rule.

One very much in the vein of their Carpark Records contemporaries, the Beths. It announces that the Toronto-based multi-instrumentalist duo of Tom McGreevy and Evan Lewis intend to follow up a highly acclaimed EP with a blinding set of upbeat, sharply written, melodic guitar gems. Talk about an attention-grabbing blast of jangly guitar jubilance on the opening to the Ducks Ltd debut album, Modern Fiction. Don’t take it too seriously, and you just might have a great time. “I Share a Rhythm” is a representative track - something that feels both familiar and incomprehensible, so that by the time you feel like you understand it, the song is already over (and replaced by “Razor Bug”, a nonsense unaccompanied vocal track). It Is Them!is the kind of work we get from a prolific band a group that puts out an album every four years wouldn’t try something so odd, but GBV’s approach of throwing every whimsical and dark idea and the wall brings us here.

This feeling of surprise seems to define the way we should be listening to GBV at this point: there’s no way to predict what’s going to happen next, so let’s just enjoy what we have. “Well, that’s interesting.” That’s what I said four or five times when listening to “Spanish Coin”, the opening track on the 30th Guided By Voices record.

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