There are just some bands whose output is so staggering in terms of both quantity and quality-- the Mountain Goats, say-- that sometimes you just want to load up the catalogue, close your eyes, hit shuffle, and let somebody else decide for you. Then, of course, there's Robert Pollard. With his Boston Spaceships and at least one fine solo offering, Bob's been having a kickass 2009. But you're forgiven if you're still poring over his even more kickass 1993; there's simply so much to listen to, and more all the time.
Take, for instance, Suitcase 3, Pollard's latest 100-song foray into the mythical valise-cum-vault that contains Pollard's unreleased material. These Suitcase sets, obviously, have been mixed bags, flitting between fidelities and vintages and bit players with little rhyme or reason and with even less consistency than your typical Pollard 28-songer. The third time out's much the same, with 75 cuts seemingly chosen and arranged at random (credited, in trademark Pollard style, to fake bands with names like Kelsey Boo Flip, Heartthrob Johnson Firestone, Erotic Zip Codes and the like) followed by an off-the-cuff demo session from the particulary fertile Bee Thousand/Alien Lanes era. It's a neat trick, really, doing it this way; though the first three-quarters of the set will almost instantly be relegated into every Bob fan's random shuffle, the last disc's total fanperson catnip, the basement of Indie Rock Valhalla, that sort of thing. At least on paper.
It's true that going through the first three discs of Suitcase 3 front-to-back isn't too far off from typing Guided by Voices into the search bar in iTunes and just letting it fly, for a couple reasons: jumping from a filthy Vampire on Titus track to a frothy Do the Collapse and almost everything changes: sonics, approach to hooks, song length, and personnel. There's no organizing principle that I can discern in Suitcase 3; a beat-up little banger from the early days sits next to stately late-era sweep, and back-and-forth it goes. There's an emphasis on the gnarly yet hooky mid-90s stuff, and even a few all-too-fleeting nods to the era; "Coastal Town" shares a few moves with Alien Lanes' "Closer You Are" and "Old Engine Driver" is a slightly different spin on "Hey Aardvark" from the sorta-classic Static Airplane Jive EP. You get drunken, silly Pollard ("You Gotta Lotta Nerve"), stoner metalworker Pollard ("Psychlophobia"), not-taking-more-time-to-record-this-than-it-did-to-write Pollard ("Take Me Back", among so many others); all the Pollards, really.
But even if one focuses on the good stuff, the sheer volume of this thing means that these first three discs to overwhelm. Something like "Janet Wait", a ruddy, barely-hanging-on ballad, is as fucking sad and gorgeous a drunk's lament as this guy's ever given us (no, really). It's just a shame it'd be so easy to miss, floating in a sea of middling half-sketches and neural misfires here. I mean, were the suitcase being used for its intended purpose, at this point we'd be down to black socks and sandals, and maybe that emergency bathing suit.
Which I reckon goes some way toward explaining why the fourth disc falls far short of expectations. The very existence of a bunch of unheard demos from the pinnacle of one of indie rock's greatest bands seems the equivalent of a Gary Young version of Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain or something. What if there's another "Echos Myron" waiting in the wings? But Bob's been through this stuff a few times already, so if it was really something to hear, we probably would've heard it. And, as it turns out, these sessions really couldn't be more off-the-cuff. Everybody seems a little drunk and a lot worn out, several songs don't even attempt an ending, and at one point someone wanders down to the basement to chatter as the tape rolls.
Sure, there's at least one great scrap of Pollardiania to be had-- the acoustic intro to "Tractor Rape Chain" is here, in full, as "South Rat Observatory"-- but there's also more than enough long stretches of random strumming and Bob grasping for lyrical straws. The last bit of Suitcase does offer some insights into Pollard's process-- turns out, for all the jokes, the guy's not exactly shitting gold, nor was he ever-- but once the voyeuristic glee of being a fly on the wall while a bunch of cool dudes get loaded and write some rock songs wear off, you're not left with a whole lot.
That is, until you start moving things around. The first three discs of Suitcase suffer from a lack of cohesion; the fourth, from far too much of it. Mix it up a little bit more, though, and you've got playlist padding and mixtape fodder and shuffly stuff for days. That relatively little of it could stand next to Bob's best isn't really the point; this is the bottom of the baggage, so to speak, and its far-flung nature and relative lack of quality control make it one just for the superfans. But that lot's hardly going to mind 100 new and newish GBV jams to have and hold in their own vaults. When you really need it, it's good to have a little extra on hand.
