RE:SCORE - Guided By Voices: Isolation Drills (2001)

TOTAL SCORE: 49, AVG: 3.06

Isolation Drills is a tough album to review since its impact on the listener is likely to swing wildly based on what aspects of GBV you like the most. In my original review I called it GBV's most accessible, which I'm not sure I agree with anymore. I find The Enemy, Fine to See You, and Privately to be droning and meandering to the point where I have a hard time even parsing an actual melody in them, and those tracks are the key reason that my final score might be surprisingly low for some readers...

Guided By Voices: Briefcase (Suitcase Abridged: Drinks And Deliveries) (2000)

TOTAL SCORE: 54, AVG: 2.84

Each of the (as of today) four Suitcase boxsets have a corresponding LP compilation that highlights some of the best songs from the set, as well as has a bonus track or two not found in the associated boxset. These are cleverly called Briefcase. I calculated what my highest possible score for the first Briefcase would have been if it contained my highest-rated songs from Suitcase plus the bonus track, and it would have had a total score of 73 and average score of 3.84. Therefore in my view, the best tracks from Suitcase do add up to a very good one-disc sized album. Also, it means that Pollard and I either have different opinions on what the best songs are, or there was more of an intention for Briefcase to survey the Suitcase boxset, and not necessarily be a "best of". What might be annoying for fans, and especially those that do not collect vinyl or missed the boat on limited prints like this, is that the bonus song on Briefcase is better than every other song on Suitcase...

RE:SCORE - Guided By Voices: Suitcase: Failed Experiments and Trashed Aircraft (2000)

TOTAL SCORE: 194, AVG: 1.94

You can traverse all of the original posts that I did on Suitcase back in 2006 to get some insight on the various tracks, and of course you can check out the re:scores for Disc 1, Disc 2, Disc 3, and Disc 4. In hindsight Suitcase really sums a big frustrating piece of being a fan of Robert Pollard and GBV, and that is having to deal with only bad quality recordings of great songs. Some of best tracks on Suitcase ended up being recording into amazing songs by the Boston Spaceships (Pollard, Slusarenko, Moen), and we have proof what a proper recording can do. Yet we are still stuck with bad recordings of could be hits like The Fool Ticket, James Riot, Shrine to the Dynamic Years, Pantherz, Oh, Blinky, and Cruise (I was so happy to get the updated Bunco Men earlier this year). Now, this is a preference of mine, as other fans have a far easier to time seeing past the sound fidelity and even see it as more of a feature than a constraint, so I want to make that clear that I am not preaching to the choir here. I still would love nothing more than Pollard taking out a bunch of poorly recorded classics and re-recording them with his latest incarnation of GBV...

RE:SCORE - Guided By Voices: Suitcase: Failed Experiments and Trashed Aircraft: DISC FOUR (2000)

TOTAL SCORE: 39, AVG: 1.56

It is interesting how time changes our perspectives on things. Looking back on my original post for the final disc on Suitcase I was so enamored with GBV's late 80's sound that I was really into this disc, since it really does focus on tracks from that era. But as I mentioned countless times in these re:score write-ups, my love for that era has dwindled in the last 15 years in comparison to all subsequent eras. I still like a lot of the songs, but not as much as other GBV-related material. Therefore, I am not surprised that the final disc on Suitcase is currently my least favorite one...