The rumors are true: Guided By Voices have announced their 45th album, Speculation And Gossip . It follows March's Crawlspace Of The Pantheon , and it arrives at the beginning of next year. The lead single "Designed For Use" is out today.

Robert Pollard told Rolling Stone that Speculation And Gossip was made during his obsession with Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon A Time In Hollywood and surrealism. "We went back to doing things remotely with each individual coming up with his own approach to sound, fidelity and instrumentation instead of playing all together," Pollard said. "I wanted more audible separation of the instruments and overall I was after more diversity in song structures, musical styles and lyrical content. I also wanted it to be much brighter, less heavy in overall tone than Crawlspace . On this one I just gave them genre references.…