The Pixies, an ahead-of-its-time band two decades ago, got its due on a wildly received 2004 reunion tour. Since then, the quartet hasn’t bothered to put out any new music and remains more popular than ever.
The Pixies' Black Francis at The Aragon - Doolittle Tour 2009
“Doolittle” was a landmark of the indie-rock era and a major influence on more successful bands that followed, including Nirvana. Yet by the time Kurt Cobain was singing the band’s praises in interviews, the Pixies were disintegrating; Black Francis launched a solo career as Frank Black in 1993 and Deal formed the Breeders.
Business has improved considerably since then. The Pixies once struggled to sell out the 2,200-seat Riviera in Chicago. Now the quartet is selling more than 12,000 tickets on its three-night Aragon residency (which concludes Saturday).
The music has held up well, and “Doolittle” in particular remains a work in which surf music and surrealist art, dreaminess and dementia, God and death, biblical allusion and sexual frustration co-exist in discrete two- and three-minute blasts of perfect noise-pop.
A handful of B-sides from the era opened the show in somewhat backhanded fashion. Hardcore fans may have appreciated hearing “Bailey’s Walk” and “Weird at My School,” but only “Manta Ray” ranked with prime Pixies, thanks to Deal’s chanted vocals.
“Debaser” finally kicked off the album proper, and it remains a manifesto: The narrator lusts not for a girl, but for the subversive thrills of the 1929 silent movie “Un Chien Andalou” (which played on the video screen as the band took the stage). The quartet’s sparse, every-note-counts interplay was in full effect: Deal’s signature bass line, Santiago’s spasms of guitar noise, Lovering’s giddy-up fills, and Black Francis’ sudden eruptions into vein-popping hysteria.
“Tame” testified to the whisper-to-a-scream dynamics that Nirvana and countless other alternative-rock bands adopted, with Black Francis and Deal turning the sound of heavy breathing into a commentary on sex, or the lack of it.
The music moved from the jingle-jangle nod to R.E.M. on “Here Comes Your Man” to the tribal thump of “Dead,” the vaudevillian dread of “Mr. Grieves” to the lounge-parody “La La Love You,” the environmental meltdown of “Monkey Gone to Heaven” to the punk screed “Crackity Jones.” Black Francis took the most innocuous words and turned them into threats, or sang of the unspeakable with matter-of-fact dispassion. The arrangements dramatized contrasts; Santiago hung back while drums and bass supported Black Francis’ voice, and Deal added counterpoint melodies with her wordless harmonies. In the end, the walls came tumbling down as Samson laid waste to a biblical temple in “Gouge Away.”
At the finish, Black Francis, Deal, Lovering and Santiago gathered at the lip of the stage for a group bow, a rare display of team unity from a band not noted for its warmth. It was the only real surprise of the evening. The quartet plowed through the set with workmanlike dispatch, playing the songs exactly as recorded. As a live act, the Pixies were always pretty pedestrian; only Deal actually appeared to be enjoying herself on stage.
Fortunately, the clamorous and still-extraordinary music made up for the showmanship gap.
Pixies set list Thursday at the Aragon
1 Dancing the Manta Ray
2 Weird at my School
3 Bailey’s Walk
4 Manta Ray
“Doolittle” album
5 Debaser
6 Tame
7 Wave of Mutilation
8 I Bleed
9 Here Comes Your Man
10 Dead
11 Monkey Gone to Heaven
12 Mr. Grieves
13 Crackity Jones
14 La La Love You
15 No. 13 Baby
16 There Goes My Gun
17 Hey
18 Silver
19 Gouge Away
First encore
20 Wave of Mutilation (UK Surf)
21 Into the White
Second encore
22 Dig for Fire
23 Planet of Sound
24 Where is My Mind?
25 Gigantic
Written by: greg@gregkot.com
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