You may know Doug Gillard from his extensive stint(s) as a guitarist in Guided by Voices (if not for his cult-classic 1999 slacker-pop collection with Robert Pollard), or from his work with Nada Surf, Neko Case, and The Hold Steady over the years. Yet he’s also three albums deep into a solo career, with LP number four, Parallel Stride, now slated to arrive on April 24 via Dromedary Records. The project’s lead single “Face of Smiles” is a predictably guitar-forward (and fairly GBV-y) pop-rock tune contrasting its breezy riffs with heavy lyricism. “Disparate imagery converges to tell the story of someone feeling a sense of loss,” Gillard shares of the song’s meaning. “The other person’s awareness of astronomical events also sparks an interest in the same in the narrator, who also happened to come up with a weird riff that morphed into an early Teenage Fanclub–type groove.”
The track’s music video compiles scenes of Gillard en route to Nuthouse Recording where the album was recorded, as well as footage of the guitarist performing the tune with an all-star backing band featuring songwriter/comedian Dave Hill on bass and Ray Kubian on drums. “The video captures a typical day wherein I commute across NYC for a recording with engineer Tom Beaujour,” he shares. “Tom also presents me with a ‘Dan Smith Will Teach You Guitar’ flyer in his studio, which for some reason I never saw when I recorded a lot of this album there. This flyer is a long-running NYC legend, having been put up in the city for over 20 years now.”
Check out the video below, and pre-order Parallel Stride here.
