Guided By Voices
Suitcase 3: Up We Go Now
Rating: 1.0/5.0
Label: Guided By Voices, Inc.
In general, I like to think an artist knows what they're doing when they put together a record and that the material left on the cutting room floor stays there for a reason. Sure, there's the occasional B-side or rarity that surpasses the complementary A-side material, but by and large, that's not usually the case.
For a band that broke up five years ago, Guided By Voices sure do put out a hell of a lot of new music. Prolificacy isn't necessarily always a good thing, and for more than two decades, first with Guided By Voices and now on his own, Robert Pollard's made a name for himself by being among the most productive songwriters of his generation, if not always his own best editor.
Suitcase 3 collects 100 unreleased GBV/Pollard tracks allegedly culled from a suitcase in his closet. This is the third entry in the Suitcase series, compiled of unreleased versions of GBV songs, demos from the mid-'90s to 2009 and an acoustic GBV jam session from the Bee Thousand/Alien Lanes era in which Pollard, Tobin Sprout and others record songs they've made up on the spot. Of the 100 tracks here, perhaps one in every four could even remotely be considered a keeper. Some of it's almost disrespectfully bad, and at times Pollard seems to have cobbled together any and all available materials to hit the 100 song mark. Then again, for as much as Pollard is one of indie rock's great songwriters, he's also among its greatest egos; this, after all, is the guy who released an entire album of his drunken onstage banter (2005's Relaxation of the Asshole).
Among Suitcase 3's many conceits is that it's billed as sporting "a Depression-friendly suggested retail price of $31.98." Now I'll be the first to admit that 30 bones for 100 tracks is a solid deal on the face of it, but the vast majority of the material here barely clocks in at the 2-minute mark, and fewer still are songs that actually merit serious listening. It's like a three-and-a half hour session of Robert Pollard taking the piss.
Pollard never met a first draft he didn't like, and the man almost seems contemptuous of the idea of craftsmanship, let alone quality control. I'd hate to hear the material that was deemed too poor for this offering, but odds are it'll show up on something like Suitcase 4 a few years from now.
I'll be the first to admit that GBV are responsible for some of the best indie rock songs of all time - "Glad Girls" alone could best many bands' entire career output. But Robert Pollard's also gone a long way towards wearing down the lionization he's been granted by the Hipsterati and critical masses. This one's for the die-hards only and even they may find their patience for Pollard's quality control specifications wearing thin.
by Aaron Passman
