Prolific indie-rockers Guided By Voices played to a raucous, boozy sell-out crowd at the Black Cat on Saturday.

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.

Timothy Bracken is the self-professed “worst banterer alive.” Prefacing songs with the ironic, humorous, or playfully disturbing (“Here’s a song about little girls”), he has made an increasingly known name for himself. It probably also helps that he writes sharp pop songs, toys with the blues, and delivers it with a vocal lurch akin to Okay or Rivers Cuomo. Originally from the Baltimore area, Bracken studied percussion in school and drummed in a few bands….