It’s a hometown show for Boston’s own Pixies as they take the stage at Big Night Live, one of Boston’s newest music venues, a testament to the ever-evolving nature of the city that first hosted one of the most storied bands in rock music.
Formed after the meeting of frontman Black Francis and guitarist Joey Santiago at the University of Massachusetts in the mid-1980s, the rock band has spent their entire existence truly and fully transforming the shape of music around them, to such a point that almost any noisy rock band formed since counts one of Pixies’ early works as a touchstone.
Pixies are a band with a legacy unlike any other; many bands may be called timeless, but it’s rare to see one so demonstrably earn and keep that designation. The faces inside Big Night Live cross a range of three or perhaps even four generations, lifelong diehards still flocking to the band’s gigs, as well as youthful newcomers eager to explore some of the roots of their current obsessions.
As many will know, Francis and Santiago were joined by bassist Kim Deal, now of The Breeders, as well as drummer David Lovering, to form the original Pixies lineup. With this team they created some of the most iconic music of the 80s and 90s, including the band’s best-known and most-lauded work, 1989’s Doolittle. The instant classic of a sophomore album cemented Pixies as one of the most enduring musical acts in all of rock, and their music inspired others the world over, including notably Thom Yorke of Radiohead, and David Bowie, who famously recorded a cover of ‘Cactus’ for his 2002 album, Heathen.
After breaking up in the 90s, the band went quiet for nearly a decade, and despite reuniting for live shows, they released no new collections of music until 2013, though Deal departed the band once more before the release of the three EPs that would become their first record in 22 years. After briefly working with late Muffs bassist Kim Shattuck, Paz Lenchantin was tapped to round out the lineup, and for half a decade has been the fourth face of the now-fully resurgent Pixies. In the years since, Pixies have released two additional records, the blistering Head Carrier and the subtler, multifaceted Beneath The Eyrie, still evolving and exploring new dimensions to their sound.
While it’s easy to view the band as a monolith, almost to the point where they seem like musical world citizens untethered by origin, Pixies played a truly colossal forty-song set with no breaks for their hometown fans – although notably absent was ‘U-Mass’, a fuzzy tune lampooning the various cliques present at the time of the band’s formation in Amherst all those years ago. The lower pit inside the newborn venue was packed, scant room to move as people vied for position to see the band perform the songs that for decades have soundtracked the lives of so many in attendance.
While on the surface it may seem counter-intuitive to call a Boston-area band “surf rock”, Pixies earned that label using the guitars of Santiago and Francis to blend that sound of the 60s with the hallmarks of punk- and art-rock that had developed in parallel in the interim decades. Songs like ‘Here Comes Your Man’ portray that fusion at its finest.
The intensity the four piece can summon with just a classic arrangement of two guitars, bass, and drums can be seen as a progenitor of modern alt-rock and post-punk – a colossal cross-section of rock-indebted music since the turn of the millennium bears at least some of the mark of Doolittle in its vein. No stranger to covers either, the band’s unique sound saw them transform such hits as ‘Head On’ by the Jesus and Mary Chain into a surf-punk triumph, Francis’ unhinged delivery energizing the song in a totally different way and searing it into many a listener’s mind as the definitive version of the track.
Pixies came to Boston armed with an expansive body of work. Four albums before their hiatus and three after, there was no shortage of material from which to choose to fill the night. The band played all twelve tracks from Beneath the Eyrie, fitting them in nicely between old standbys to create a seamless blend of old and new material.
Lenchantin’s expanded role in the band is on full display with Eyrie, having co-written a quarter of the tracks with Francis. While naturally a part of her role in the live setting is to fill the shoes of Kim Deal, her own contributions to their most recent records are not to be understated. Two standouts of the latest record, ‘On Graveyard Hill’ and ‘Los Surfers Muertos’, owe their success as much to Lenchantin as they do Francis, and her presence onstage – accentuated by a flower woven through the headstock of her bass – is iconic in its own right.
While Beneath the Eyrie was ostensibly the focus of the night, the band brought 28 additional songs to bear as well, including a wide selection from Doolittle. Whether it’s the blistering pace of ‘Crackty Jones’, a short-lived lightning rod of a song; the bluesy beginning of ‘Mr. Grieves’ which finds Francis snarling, “Hope everything is alriiiiiiight”; or the foreboding bass from Lenchantin that begins ‘Gouge Away’ – a song so iconic bands have named themselves after it; Doolittle remains in the minds of Pixies fans of all ages some of the most compelling rock music ever crafted. During ‘Gouge Away’, Lenchantin hums in a lulling fashion, as if to mask the brutal passages of the song to come. “Sha-na-na-na!” she cries at the climax of the song, the singers finally both letting go as Francis too enters the final rush of the song.
Francis’ iconic voice is as integral to the Pixies sound as any instrument as well. His screams during ‘There Goes My Gun’ still carry the same frightening, raw power they always did, while still able to deliver his classic quieter passages that gave Pixies their classic dynamic range; the relaxed, mantric repetitions of ‘Caribou’ or ‘Havalina’, to name a couple. Elsewhere, new tune ‘This Is My Fate’ finds Pixies playing with the sounds of twisted carnival music, dark but simultaneously coy, something one might expect from Tom Waits as Francis’ voice becomes a low half-whisper, carrying an unnerving hint of menace throughout the room.
As the end of the night fast approaches, the band – who have been notably focused on going from song to song – address the audience with a “Hey!” It’s the start of the final three songs of the evening, and ‘Hey’ is among the best-loved Pixies tracks of all time.
Francis turns the word “chained” into a three-syllable stretch, matched in its unique nature only by the time Rowland S. Howard expanded “spine” to ten syllables in ‘Shivers’. From there the band launches into ‘Debaser’, to riotous cheering from onlookers, and closes fittingly where they began all those years ago, with ‘Bone Machine’ – the very first track from their debut LP, Surfer Rosa.
Pausing onstage after their Herculean effort, Francis and company are still and gracious – absorbing the love only the city that birthed them can bestow, more than three decades on.
Review and photos by Collin Heroux
