Guided By Voices. Photo from www.gbv.com.

From the early 1980s until their breakup in 2004, Guided By Voices built a reputation as one of the great live acts in rock-and-roll. Armed with some of the best material in all of indie rock — thanks to frontman Robert Pollard’s inspired, ultra-prolific songwriting — GBV’s various incarnations consistently enthralled its loyal fans with dynamically shambolic, three-to-four-hour marathon performances fueled by massive amounts of alcohol. Expectations were high as GBV played a sold-out 9:30 Club on Thursday night with its recently-reunited “classic” (1993-96) lineup featuring Tobin Spout and Mitch Mitchell on guitar, Greg Demos on bass and Kevin Fennell on drums. The Ohio-based quintet delivered a solid, if surprisingly brief, two-hour performance that featured a sterling set list, but — if only because it rarely achieved the exhilarating heights of past GBV extravaganzas — ultimately felt like a slight disappointment.

With a neon sign behind him declaring “THE CLUB IS OPEN,” Pollard led his band on stage promptly at 9:15, swigging from a bottle of Jose Cuervo before launching the set with “Break Even,” “Pimple Zoo,” and “Shocker in Gloomtown.” Though neither the band nor the audience seemed fully warmed up, “Tractor Rape Chain” provided an early highlight, as fans fist-pumped and sang along to the song’s infectious chorus in an effort to get themselves properly fired up. The middle-aged musicians seemed to put forth their best effort, nodding to their trademark stage antics of the past while showing the inevitable effects of age. Pollard demonstrated some toned-down versions of his signature leg-kicks and mic-twirls while smoking liberally on stage, and Demos and Mitchell struck oft-awkward rock-god poses, frequently with cigarettes dangling from their lips. Notably, and to the possible detriment of their performance, the band drank with a relative moderation that would have been uncharacteristic fifteen years ago, with Pollard sticking mostly to beer and only occasionally reaching for the tequila.