I remember seeing Guided by Voices a long time ago at the Sunset Junction Fair, and they drank such an impressive number of beer cans during their set, that the stage was covered of crushed cans at the end. No such thing this time, they were quite sober but some of them were nevertheless chain smoking.
It was one of their last dates performing with the reunited classic '93-'96 Lineup’ (with tattooed-heavy-smoking Mitch Mitchell and much more sober Tobin Sprout on guitars, Kevin Fennell on drums and Greg Demos, wearing some funny pants, on bass) as they have chosen their appearance at the Hopscotch Music Festival in Raleigh on September 9th as their farewell. It was then another good reason to catch their performance at the FYF fest, where they played an energetic set, nicotine-fueled, in front of adoring fans. True, all the people around me were singing along the lyrics, fist in the air, and a guy next to me videotaped the whole set.
Their set at the FYF fest, just before the Descendents’, was filled by Robert Pollard’s badass attitude on stage, kicking in the air, throwing his leg very high like a young man, playing with his mic as if it was some kind of lasso, making a grin every 5 minutes, showing all the confidence in the world and enchaining the songs just like his cigarettes.
These guys have so many songs and they were so fast at browsing their infinite catalogue, it was hard to follow,… I am only sure they played some songs from their album ‘Bee Thousand’, like ‘Tractor Rape Chain’ or ‘I’m a scientist’, and ‘Always Crush Me’, and ‘Some Drilling Implied’ as their last song, but there were many others, and I was more absorbed by their stage presence than by trying to catch the titles of the songs, that I am not really familiar with by the way. With Guided by Voices, I have always had the impression that their songs were written and recorded in less time it takes to play them, with weird hooks and carelessly executed vocals, but,… it does not matter, they have been nevertheless building their own myth and it shows.
Guided by Pollard’s shouted vocals, the guitar riffs were like whips slashing the air, Mitchell was doing a zillion windmills with his arm, and there was absolutely nothing lo-fi about their energy on stage.
‘We fuck up a song at every show’ said Pollard after a false start, but it was the only time the set was slowing down, the rest was a wall of distortion, eardrum tearing, with short songs done in a minute or two played by five tough guys good at doing the bad-manners-on-stage, and just having fun.