As the twentieth century transitioned into the twenty-first,
Robert Pollard was in a similar state of transition. In 1998 and 1999, he made
his first hi-fi Guided by Voices albums, each with new line ups, each for
different labels, and each with different critical consensuses (Mag Earwhig!: yay! Do the Collapse: nay!).
Bob’s all-new solo career was similarly unstable. He began
it in 1996 with the promisingly haphazard Not
in My Airforce, which he followed
with the tight, almost uniformly terrific Waved
Out in 1998. However, the possibility that solo Pollard might continue to
progress fell apart with that same year’s Kid
Marine. The music was not bad—a new backing band that would help him make
the villainously underrated Do the
Collapse provide polished performances— but the songs don’t display Pollard’s
usual golden ear. The lack of structure can be expected from the guy who created
all those fantastic fragments on Bee
Thousand and Alien Lanes. The
lack of hooks is much less forgivable. There are some pretty good songs, such
as “Far Out Crops” and “White Gloves Come Off”, but there’s nothing in the
realm of the previous albums’ “Psychic Pilot Clocks Out” or “Subspace
Biographies” to anchor it. “Town of Mirrors” boasts a big shout-along chorus
perfect for band/audience communion in concert, but that chorus isn’t very
catchy and the rest of the track barely qualifies as a song.
Then the instability continued as Pollard finished out the
century by collaborating with GBV’s newest MVP wingman, Doug Gillard. Multi-instrumentalist
Gillard recorded the instrumental tracks for Pollard’s songs solo before passing the tapes
back to the writer, who fastened his own weird words, melodies, and voice to
them. The results are probably Bob’s best non-GBV work. Speak Kindly of Your Volunteer Fire Department uncaps a flood of
fabulous songs, many of which would become live GBV staples. Those thirsting
for the hooks absent from Kid Marine had
their needs well quenched with stuff like “Frequent Weaver who Burns”, “Pop
Zeus”, “Do Something Real”, “Tight Globes”, “Messiahs”, and the rest of a
bloody beautiful disc that ranks majestically alongside GBV’s early twentieth
century work.
Both Kid Marine
and Speak Kindly of Your Volunteer Fire
Department were available in limited vinyl editions twenty years ago, but those
are hard to come by today. So GBV Inc. is reissuing both in newly remastered
editions on vinyl, as well as in FLAC and MP3 formats. I only had access to the
digital files, both of which are brick walled to the extreme.
