After an August 19 show as part of New York City's Hudson River Rocks series, the tour will officially launch September 9 in Boston.
The group has dates scheduled over the next four months, mostly in week-long blocks, culminating in a two-night stand December 30-31 at Chicago's Metro / Smart Bar.
Guided By Voices got its start in the early 1980s in Dayton, Ohio, as the brainchild of schoolteacher Robert Pollard. They issued a series of lo-fi indie rock records over the next decade, keeping a fairly low profile but steadily amassing a solid fanbase.
By the early '90s, their music was being widely distributed and they began touring regularly. Albums on TVT and Matador garnered critical acclaim, including their most recent offering, last year's Universal Truths and Cycles.
This spring, they announced that Half Smiles Of The Decomposed would be their final release.
"This feels like a last album for Guided by Voices," Pollard said. "I've always said that when I make a record that I'm totally satisfied with as befitting a final album, then that will be it. And this is it."
The death of GBV doesn't mean, of course, that Pollard is going to give up music for good. He has done a number of solo efforts and collaborations over the years, and his latest album, Fiction Man, was released in May.