San Francisco Weekly
November 22, 2000

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

Robert Pollard's songwriting urge is almost pathological. Thankfully most of his songs are great, good, or at least interesting. Suitcase was culled from his legendary suitcase full of cassettes with unreleased material recorded solo and with his ever-changing "band" Guided by Voices. It's all here in this four-CD box set: discarded experimental nonsense, poorly recorded '70s stadium rock that sounds like it was played through a vacuum cleaner, and '60s pop buried under tape hiss. Each song is attributed to a different imaginary band, so if you don't like Little Bobby Pop, you might be more into the Artrock Unicorns or Bozo's Octopuss. It's almost too much to wade through, but sit tight -- another hit song is coming around in a minute and a half, sometimes sooner. Every GBV fan is praying Santa will bring him Suitcase. Don't make him cry on Christmas morning.