Boston Spaceships

Since the mid-1990s, Bob Pollard has created too many bands and side projects to count. It's kind of silly when you think about it. Most of them are really nothing more than Pollard and a bunch of indie dudes backing him up. Even Guided By Voices, around the time of Mag Earwhig!, morphed into a rotating cast of hired guns. "There is no difference," the indie legend once said. "I am Robert Pollard, and I am Guided By Voices." Boston Spaceships adhere to this arrangement. The group's output to date, a tuneful mixture of power pop and crunchy alt-rock (some of it dating back to the Suitcase years), is classic Pollard and could have easily been issued under his name alone. Also featuring the Decemberists drummer John Moen along with Chris Slusarenko (who played bass in the 2003-04 incarnation of Guided By Voices), Boston Spaceships find our hero eschewing the arty tendencies of his post-G.B.V. solo albums and going for more of a live-in-the-studio rock 'n' roll feel. After the release of the group's debut, 2008's Brown Submarine, Pollard even came out of his self-imposed retirement from touring.