From NYT

The Pixies Get Their Act Together
By JON PARELES

Published: August 8, 2004
LONDON
MIDWAY through one of their four instantly sold-out concerts in June at the
Brixton Academy in London, the reunited Pixies charged into "Monkey Gone to
Heaven," a song about apocalypse and faith. The audience - some who had
seen the Pixies between 1986 and 1992, and an equal contingent of younger
fans getting their first glimpse - all knew what to do as Frank Black
started to sing the song's reverse countdown: "If man is five/ Then the
devil is six/ And if the devil is six/ Then God is seven."
At 39, he looked less like a rock star than ever: bald, portly, dressed in
a shapeless T-shirt. He barely glanced at Kim Deal, 43, the band's bassist
and occasional singer. Yet as he worked his way from a strangled, nasal
whine to a shriek, the whole room sang along, and thousands of hands shot
into the air with fingers raised on cue: five, six, seven. The crowd
couldn't have been more enthusiastic if the song, released in 1989, were in
the current Top 10.
The Pixies have been rapturously received since they started touring in
April, and have been one of the few unqualified successes in a summer
filled with foundering tours. Reunions are a staple in the concert
business, as acts from Simon and Garfunkel to the Eagles to Duran Duran to
the Sex Pistols periodically reappear. Affection for the oldies is one
draw; so is the possibility that every reunion is the last chance to see a
group. Nostalgia seems to peak after two decades, and lately the postpunk
bands of the 1980's have been regrouping - among them, Mission of Burma,
which sold out a club tour last year and went on to make a new album.
But the response to the Pixies reunion has been greater by orders of
magnitude. It wasn't just the shows in smaller venues that sold so briskly;
more than 50,000 tickets were snapped up for the Pixies' day at the
Coachella festival, and theaters around the United States have quickly sold
out for multiple dates. The Pixies were to perform at the New York stop of
the Lollapalooza Festival this month, which had already sold 11,000 tickets
when the entire tour was canceled. Instead, they will have New York dates
on Dec. 12 and 13 at the Hammerstein Ballroom. Meanwhile, the company
DiscLive has been offering instant live recordings of every concert by the
reunited group. Those CD's, in numbered limited editions of 1,000 or 2,000,
are selling out, too, and turning into instant collectors' items available
for handsome mark-up on eBay.
Charles Michael Kittredge Thompson IV, a k a Frank Black, who called
himself Black Francis on the Pixies' recordings, claimed to be unimpressed.
Pixies audiences were enthusiastic for most of the group's initial career,
he said. Now, he added, there are more curiosity-seekers. "I'm wondering if
there's a large section of the audience that kind of isn't really getting
it," he said. "That's good. It gives us an opportunity to preach to the
still-not-converted."
It's an arty underdog's attitude that seems to be a holdover from the
band's first time around. The Pixies, who got started in Boston in 1986,
became hit-makers in England and Europe. Yet in the United States, they
never quite broke out of the collegiate rock circuit, even after they were
signed to a major label, Elektra. Those who discovered the Pixies have
cherished their catalog ever since. When the band played Coachella on May
1, one visitor's license plate read, "DEBASR," for "Debaser," the Pixies
song about (among other things) the Surrealist film "Un Chien Andalou."
Black Francis's songs for the Pixies were terse but wild-eyed. As he sang
about the Bible, science fiction, incest or immigration, the music could
sound like punk or country, surf-rock or metal. Joey Santiago's lead guitar
laced the music with twangy little hooks or solos that threatened to skid
right out of the song; Ms. Deal answered Black Francis's hopped-up vocals
with calm, airy responses, and David Lovering's drums paced the music from
brisk to quasi-Latin to booming. Quiet verses suddenly gave way to howling,
stomping choruses - a tactic that would be commandeered by the Pixies' most
influential and grateful fan, Kurt Cobain of Nirvana.