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Detroit Free Press
Terry Lawson

Robert Pollard with Doug Gillard
Speak Kindly of Your Volunteer Fire Department   
#4 in the Fading Captain Series

Giving The Artist a run for his money as the hardest-working man in rock 'n' roll is Robert Pollard, signalman of low-fi legends Guided By Voices. Here, Pollard teams with multi-instrumentalist Doug Gillard for the fourth volume of homegrown, demo-style recordings he's dubbed The Fading Captain Series.' As with the previous installment, Kid Marine,' Speak Kindly' is heavily influenced by Happy Jack'-era Who, but Gillard fleshes out seat-of-the-pants soliloquies like Soft Smoke' and postcard poems like Larger Massachusetts' with deftly distorted guitars and psychedelic salutes that give even Pollard's most precious wordplay some '60s-style bravado. This makes an especially astute companion piece to GBV's Do the Collapse,' the band's most polished and produced album, and 1999's most overlooked pop album, period.