Pitchfork

With a band as prolific and uneven as Guided by Voices, describing any single release as "definitive" seems dubious, if not misleading. To apply this term to the band's third box set seems nothing short of comical. But I'll be damned if the boys at Matador weren't on to something when they slapped a big yellow sticker on the Hardcore UFO's box set that reads, "The definitive GBV box set." Rather than simply lumping together a bunch of marginal or unreleased material, Hardcore UFO's actually pulls together a bunch of material fans have been anticipating for a good long while; a decent GBV live album, the perpetually out-of-print debut EP Forever Since Breakfast, and most of the B-sides from the band's Matador heyday.

The last GBV box, Suitcase, was an impenetrable mess. Though a surprisingly high percentage of its 100 unreleased songs were wonderful, there was no discernible organization to the set, making it a real challenge to wade through. Hardcore UFO's, on the other hand, compiles five easy-to-swallow and separately titled CDs, a DVD, and a book of photos into one nicely compartmentalized, intensely approachable package. And like the best box sets, Hardcore UFO's manages to be representative of GBV's greatness without rehashing too much previously available material.

The one questionable inclusion here is that of a chronologically sequenced Human Amusements at Hourly Rates, the band's also-separately-released best-of album. Pollard's sequencing proved pretty essential to the enjoyment of the best-of disc, and hearing the songs ordered chronologically only brings out the disparities between GBV's fractured and imaginative early work and their more straightforward recent output. On a more practical level, it's pretty safe to assume that somebody willing to drop $55 on a box set is pretty familiar with the band's albums-- with the best-of album also available separately, it's hard to justify its inclusion in a "hardcore" box set.

Thankfully, Human Amusements is the only disc here that needlessly rehashes old material. Demons & Painkillers, a collection of B-sides and compilation appearances from the Alien Lanes through Mag Earwhig! period, shows just how much of the band's best output has never been released on one of their full-lengths. Studio-produced versions of "Motor Away", "My Valuable Hunting Knife", and "Game of Pricks" are welcome inclusions, if they ultimately prove less dynamic than the basement versions from the albums. The B-sides from the underrated Mag Earwhig!, including a fantastic rocked-up version of "Now to War", while the epic "(I'll Name You) The Flame That Cries" may be the best songs on the disc, speaking to the wealth of fantastic post-Under the Bushes material.

Much of this material pops up on Live from the Wheelchair Races, by far the best GBV live document ever to see release. Culled from throughout the band's career, the disc captures spot-on performances of the band's best songs, the inebriated antics of previous live releases played down in favor of excellence and energy. Enthusiasm has always been one of the band's greatest strengths, and this is the first of the band's live recordings, apart from the video-only Live in L.A. performance, to truly capture this.

Perhaps the most predictable disc in the set, Delicious Pie & Thank You for Calling is the latest in a seemingly endless batch of previously unreleased demo recordings to see the light of day in recent years. Thankfully, the overall quality of the songs is slightly higher than usual this time around. Early demo versions of Mag Earwhig!'s balls-out rockers demonstrate Pollard's excitement at having a more virtuosic band at his disposal. Super-early demo recordings show that the "lo-fi" setup used by Pollard to record most of GBV's classic output doesn't sound so awesome on its own. As per usual, there's little here that challenges the best from Bee Thousand or Alien Lanes, but plenty of interesting material for fans to dig through. The Forever Since Breakfast EP also proves a compelling listen, showing that Pollard was honing his big-rock chops long before he began to explore his inimitable melodic sensibility.

And then there's Watch Me Jumpstart, a fascinating documentary directed by Banks Tarver that perfectly rounds out Hardcore UFO's. The film loosely chronicles the band from their early days through their mid-90s ascent. About as far as you can hope to get from a glamorizing rockstar biopic, Watch Me Jumpstart watches as Pollard carves out his own private musical universe amidst the boredom and sprawl of Dayton, Ohio, and shows that Guided by Voices didn't come out of nowhere-- they grew out of a rock and roll history absorbed and recreated in Robert Pollard's basement. Though by no means a complete document of Guided by Voices, Hardcore UFO's is a welcome window into their origins and development.