Pitchfork Music Festival !011 Preview

reunited last class to play Matador's 21st anniversary party in Vegas, which turned out to be a form of gateway drug into a national tour_which led to a few more live dates, etc. Voices' set at the 2011 Pitchfork Festival (once again featuring the "classic" 1993-1996 lineup) is one of a fistful of national tour dates this year. So often for the farewell - but was there ever any question in anyone's mind that Pollard is a lifer? When you've been at it since 1983, your catalogue includes more than 1,000 songs, and you're nurturing multiple side projects, no one's ever going to trust you if you say you're calling it quits.

It's always seemed easy for Guided by Voices to to a) put a lively show together, and b) pack a lot of fabric into said show, because short-and-sweet lo-fi songs are the band's bread and butter. The Voices live experience is all about excess: lengthy set lists where the circle plays deep into their gargantuan catalogue, Pollard getting drunker and drunker as the night goes on. It's a unique form of rowdy that works as good in a dank, dingy club and at a festival surrounded by a multitude of rabid fans.

Susannah says: In high school, I heard "Watch Me Jumpstart" blaring over the loudspeaker system of my favorite record shop and that marked the origin of my abiding passion for Guided by Voices. A highlight from this torrid one-sided affair: hijacking the TV from my college roommates to determine the ring on Austin City Limits, one of GBV's (supposedly) final shows. Sorry you'll never know how that sequence of Extreme Home Makeover ends, ladies.

Catch them at the festival: Friday at 6:25PM on the Green Stage

The Lowdown/The Live Experience: In 2004, Robert Pollard announced he was calling it quits with Guided By Voices, setting into question a "farewell tour" - which, in the heroic tradition of notable musicians' farewell tours, wasn't much of a farewell. The Pollard-termed "classic" (read: Bee Thousand/Alien Lanes) Voices lineup - Robert Pollard, Tobin Sprout, Mitch Mitchell, Kevin Fennell, Greg Demos -