Not many bands could release a box set of 100 original unreleased songs, and fewer still could (or would) do it twice. But given
Robert Pollard's freakish level of productivity, it figures that
Guided by Voices would be the first band to turn that singular accomplishment into a hat trick --
Suitcase 3: Up We Go Now is the third in a series of four-disc box sets featuring 100 previously unheard tracks from
GBV archives, which is all the more impressive given the fact
Guided by Voices broke up at the end of 2004, meaning bandleader
Pollard has been sitting on this many leftovers five years after the group ceased to be. However, quantity isn't always quality, and while the first two
Suitcase sets were somewhat hit and miss,
Suitcase 3: Up We Go Now is far and away the weakest in the series, a mass of scraps that didn't make the cut on the first two collections (or on one of their 15 official studio albums) for reasons that become obvious when you try to plow through the thing. The majority of the tracks on
Suitcase 3 don't sound like songs so much as fragments, ideas that were quickly committed to tape and then tossed into a box where they stayed, and even by the lo-fi standards of
GBV, the production and fidelity is often dreadful, meaning that they often sound like they were recorded on a boombox, only this time, it was a boombox that wasn't working quite right, with static, severe hiss, volume jumps and dips, and other examples of technical ineptitude that make
Propeller sound like
Dark Side of the Moon by comparison. A lot of the material doesn't even seem to be
Guided By Voices in the strictest sense, just
Pollard and his rudimentary acoustic guitar, and the rapid, martial strum of these numbers gets tiring with great speed. It's worth noting that many of these flaws could also be attributed to some of
GBV's best albums, but those albums also had enough great songs to compensate, and
Suitcase 3 appears to be what was left over after
Pollard's A-List songs were harvested for previous projects. While discs one through three are made up of demos and unreleased tracks (each credited to a different imaginary band), disc four offers the promise of buried treasure, preserving some improvised acoustic sessions from 1994 with
Pollard and guitarists
Tobin Sprout and Greg Demos working up material for the classic
Alien Lanes. Given that this one was one of
GBV's most impressive periods, fans might expect something special, but while there are bits are pieces that would evolve with time into worthwhile songs, most of this disc is the sound of three friends goofing off, and the fact they're often interrupted by ringing telephones, children playing, and other folks having conversations eliminates the feeling you're witnessing the creation of magic. There are a few stray items on
Suitcase 3 that are worth a listen -- several songs that seemingly date from the
R.E.M. -emulating period of the Forever Since Breakfast EP, and the gloriously baffling "Sonny the Monster," an oddball synth pop interpretation of a number
Pollard wrote for one of his pre-
GBV bands. But the unfortunate truth is,
Suitcase 3: Up We Go Now is the shoddiest posthumous
Guided by Voices release to date, and maybe the least satisfying product
Robert Pollard has released to date. If the stuff left in the suitcase isn't any better than this, Bob, you're better off just leaving it in the basement. ~ Mark Deming