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From Barnes and Noble.com
By Scott Schinder

Suitcase: Failed Experiments and Trashed Aircraft
# 6 in the Fading Captain Series

Since graduating from home-recording obscurity to indie-rock iconhood, Guided by Voices have released a prolific stream of albums, EPs, and singles. Still, it isn't all that surprising that frontman Robert Pollard and company lay claim to enough unreleased archival material to fill the 100-song, four-CD Suitcase. This consistently colorful stroll through Pollard's basement tapes -- which includes a snazzy booklet with lyrics, photos, and essays -- is obviously aimed at the most die-hard GbV completists, but the material is actually consistently engaging, boasting the band's trademark mix of hissy lo-fi sonics, sterling pop hooks, and artfully inscrutable wordplay. Though a handful of Suitcase's songs -- including "Buzzards and Dreadful Crows," "Wondering Boy Poet," and "Static Airplane Jive" -- have appeared on albums in different versions, most of these sonically humble but musically ambitious tunes have never been released before. Rather than crediting Guided by Voices, each of the tracks -- which date back to the early 1980s and are performed by various combinations of players -- is attributed to a different fictitious band with a regal moniker (e.g. Huge on Pluto, Judas & the Piledrivers, Champion Hairpuller, Elvis Caligula). Offering an embarrassment of musical riches that will delight GbV fanatics and probably perplex everyone else, Suitcase is a powerful testament to the band's loopy brilliance.