UPDATED: Bob Pollard’s Full Plate: What Pitchfork Missed - Circus Devils LP, Spaceships 411

Pitchfork reported this morning on the umpteenth Guided by Voices box set that’s on the way, November 3’s Suitcase 3. We’ve actually been dialoguing regularly with Bob Pollard’s camp the past couple of weeks, and we have some additional information - on that project and more - that isn’t in their write-up. Lucky you.

For starters, the four-CD, hundred-song treasure chest should really be labeled a Pollard box set, not a GbV one, since it incorporates loads of material from some of his other affairs. We’re talking old and new demos; outtakes (including ones from Pollard’s just released solo album, Elephant Jokes); early versions of songs; an unreleased song, “There Are Other Worlds,” that had been written for the movie “The United States of Leland”; and more.

Disc four embodies an acoustic impromptu jam session recorded by Pollard, Tobin Sprout and Greg Demos in the mid-’90s, between Bee Thousand and Alien Lanes (the band’s prime, as many would attest).

But while Pitchfork also touches on the October 6 release of a new album by Pollard’s active Boston Spaceships, to be called Zero to 99, our source in the GbV camp let us know over the weekend that yet another Boston Spaceships record, Our Cubehouse Still Rocks, will also soon be in the works. Zero to 99 will be coming October 6 on Guided by Voices Inc., and later this summer or in the fall, the band will get to work on Our Cubehouse Still Rocks.

“The music is being recorded by Jonathan Drews and Chris Slusarenko at Last of the Explorers in Portland, Oregon (this is where we recorded Planets and Zero). Working around drummer John Moen’s Decemberists touring schedule. The vocals will be recorded at a new studio that is being built by Todd Tobias just outside of Kent, Ohio,” our source told us. “The album is Bob anthem-heavy. 17 songs long.”

The source also spilled some of the tracks that’ll be featured on the release: “Pluto Is Polluted,” “The Way Out,” “The British and The French” and “John the Dwarf Wants to Become an Angel.”

Boston Spaceships are also teaming with another label, Sub Pop, for the release of a new single: ”In the Bathroom (Up Half the Night)” b/w “Unshaven Bird.” 

Moreover, Boston Spaceships, the GbV box and Elephant Jokes aren’t actually the only things on Pollard’s plate, as the Pitchfork piece suggests. This month, he’s also recording a new album by Circus Devils, his experimental psych project with the Tobiases (Todd and Tim).

Never underestimate the Bob.