Robert Pollard With Doug Gillard

★★★★ Speak Kindly Of Your Volunteer Fire Department GUIDED BY VOICES, INC. LP Mercurial Guided By Voices frontman’s aim was true on this side-project. “No filler” is an alien concept in the Pollardverse, but 1999’s Speak

Kindly… found the singing schoolteacher in rare, focused form. Bob’s newly-appointed foil in GBV, Doug Gillard mailed him home-recorded instrumentals to add vocals to – the sort of rustic process GBV was abandoning for Ric Ocasek’s big-time polish. But Gillard’s inventive home-made productions suited an album that matched brash Byrds-meetsWire powerpop to folky introspection and moody prog. And I Don’t (So Now I Do) was as perfectly imperfect a pop song as Pollard ever wrote – though the selfmythologising Pop Zeus (“He who shits out magic may shine”) came close – while Port Authority channelled the brooding disquiet of Gabrielera Genesis, indicating the moodier themes Pollard would explore through middleage. Meanwhile, Larger Massachusetts’ haunting refrain about “the mediumsized world… making a comeback” meditated on the suburban garagelands where mavericks like Robert Pollard flourished – and, on this evidence, truly belonged.