Pixies - the same and better

There's more to be said about the might and influence of Pixies than can fit on a single page. The band's start-and-stop-on-a-dime dynamics, its intermangling of chirpy pop, rough hardcore, and the crunch-jangling guitars winnowing through that mix made Pixies the blueprint for all indie-whatever that followed. The way singer/guitarist Black Francis crafted splintered lyrical allusions to space, sex, gods, and monsters, then yelped, mumbled, and wheedled his way through them - together with bassist/vocalist Kim Deal's harmonies - gave every Cobain-come-lately license to ache and babble.

Their small crop of albums never struck platinum but remained legend. The band parted ways in 1993, reunited in 2004, with Deal leaving in 2013 just as they were recording new material, and made more recent news when they let go of replacement bassist Kim Shattuck with a phone call and quickly hired Paz Lenchantin as part of a temporary-bassist plan.

When the Pixies packed the Electric Factory Friday night those who witnessed them through the late-'80s/early-'90s wanted another taste of the band's strange ways, and those who hadn't wanted to bask in their glow and dance weirdly.

All aforementioned Pixies sounds and Francis visions were dramatically present; bigger, cleaner, and bass-ier than ever, for the latter thanks to Lenchantin on "Bagboy," a new-ish song as menacing as anything in their catalog.

Guitarist Joey Santiago was Pixies' ace in the hole, with a churning blend of psych-punk-noise (the crack of "Bone Machine," the cabaret jitter of "Mr. Grieves") and quick, bow-bending solos. Drummer David Lovering's heavy, galloping rhythms on "Crackity Jones" made your heart leap.

More than ever though, Francis was king, a Lon Chaney-like man of a thousand screechy voices with cryptic intentions. From his high-pitched holler during the neo-hardcore "Something Against You," to the crabby coo of "Caribou"; from the sound of rage on "Debaser" and its Dali-like slicing of eyeballs, to the misogynistic sneer of "Hey" ("Whores in my head/Whores at my door/Whores in my bed"), and beyond, Francis, like a great character actor, found oh-so-many ways to shriek. For all the shrillness, his nicest moments came during (mostly) acoustic numbers such as the aquatic "Where Is My Mind?" On these tunes, Francis and Pixies found tonic tranquillity where acerbic haste and nail-biting angst usually reside.