Live Review: Pixies at Freeborn Hall in Davis, CA

The Pixies didn't so much put on a concert at Northern California's UC Davis on Thursday night (4/29) as they did a closing argument.

Now reunited after an acrimonious breakup a dozen years ago (legend has it that frontman/guitarist Frank Black, a.k.a. Black Francis and Charles Thompson, dissolved the group via fax), the quartet seemed to be staking its claim among rock's giants.

They stripped down the stage--the lone extravagance was a fog machine--they cut out banter with the sold-out crowd, and they proceeded to offer up about two-dozen gems in 80 minutes.

Opening with "Bone Machine," and traversing a crowd-pleasing set list that was weighted toward material from their first three releases--the 1987 EP "Come On Pilgrim, the 1988 album "Surfer Rosa" and its 1989 follow-up "Bossanova"--the quartet sounded as if they'd never gone away.

Black's voice remains an incredible instrument, one that seems specifically designed for the loud-soft-loud dynamics that the Pixies perfected long before the style was appropriated by the likes of Nirvana and Radiohead. While he can hold a pitch-perfect note indefinitely--as he proved this night on "Caribou"--his steely vocal cords can still belt out the best scream in the business: he didn't hold back at all on "Debaser," and seemed no worse for the wear when switching gears to "Monkey Gone to Heaven."

Bassist Kim Deal--whose band The Breeders scored more commercial success than the Pixies ever did thanks to the quirky hit "Cannonball"--was subdued, content to spend the night gazing at the neck of her bass and contributing back-up and harmony vocals. Still, she and drummer David Lovering kept the bottom end solid, though the venue's acoustics muddied their more intricate interplay.

Guitarist Joey Santiago provided punctuation for Black's licks throughout the night, but shined on "Vamos," during a solo that brilliantly slipped into and out of feedback.

After piling through their set, the foursome walked to the front of the stage to drink in the whoops and applause of the crowd for a good three minutes before exiting. They returned a short time later for a three-song encore that ended with "Gigantic," Deal's only lead-vocal performance of the night, and a perfectly executed one at that.

The band again left the stage, and the crowd--a mix of aging hipsters and students--cheered and stomped for more. But, really, there was nothing left to prove.

Case closed.

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