By: Guided By Voices
Appears on: Sweating The Plague
“Heavy Like The World” is one of two revamped Suitcase tracks on Sweating The Plague, along with “Your Cricket Is Rather Unique” (the original “Heavy Like The World” was titled “I’d Choose You” and appears on Suitcase 2: American Superdream Wow). Another trait they share is a similar style guitar riff; in both songs, Robert Pollard uses an arpeggio with a fretted note on one string followed by the two strings above it being played open. In the case of “Heavy Like The World,” this has led to some fans comparing its riff to that of “Wormhole” from Do The Collapse; and while the first two arpeggio measures of both songs are pretty much identical, I find the riff from “Heavy Like The World” sounds much more like a slowed down “Why Did You Land?” in its chord changes.
