Considering the sheer enormity of all the recorded music produced by Guided By Voices frontman Robert Pollard, and the somewhat lax quality filter his releases have had over the years, it's somewhat shocking that there are still shoeboxes somewhere stuffed with material that's never seen the light of day. Pollard's new solo album, Superman Was a Rocker, is built from random lunges into these very real boxes. Old instrumentals, radio broadcasts, and general dicking around from the drunken glory days are exhumed and reworked, with Pollard adding new vocal tracks. As the pessimists among you might have guessed, much of the short album is dominated by a stunning half-ass-edness that calls into question the album's entire reason for being.  If he wasn't really trying to turn these pieces of music into something more substantial than an outtake gathering dust, why bother? But in an even more predictable revelation, there is at least that one moment when Pollard's tossed dart hits bullseye, and all it temporarily forgiven. "Love Your Spaceman" has the sublime melodic chug of vintage GVB, non-coincidentally because that's the band it was meant for. But unlike some of the collection's other material, its harmonic vocal interplay and parade of non-sequiturs sound at least momentarily slaved over. But it's the found tape itself that's most impressive. A delicately chiming acoustic line dodges in and around a surly electric counterpart. Such a nice backdrop could withstand a piss-take of a vocal overdub, but thankfully it isn't required to. In fact, this song is so superior to the rest of the disc that you can't help but wonder if it wasn't the first tape he pulled out, and the impetus for a project that kept producing diminishing returns.