Recap: Pixies at DAR Costitution Hall

In the 20 years since Pixies released Doolittle, frontman Black Francis has added a couple of inches to the ol’ waistline, drummer David Lovering has lost a few hairs, and, according to a recent interview with NPR, bassist Kim Deal has moved back in with her parents in Dayton, OH. But during the quartet’s Monday night show at DAR Constitution Hall—the first of two marking the last stop on the 2009 Doolittle Tour—such superficial changes only reinforced the band's more enduring qualities. Francis’ vocals are as gritty and engaging as ever, Deal’s rolling basslines and minimalist vocal accents still fail to miss a beat, and the band as a whole is as tight and powerful as it was two decades ago.

After a 15-minute screening of Un Chien Andalou—Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali’s 1929 classic surrealist film, and the inspiration for Doolittle’s opener, “Debaser”—the band warmed up with a string of self-described “obscure” B-Sides (“Dancing The Manta Ray,” “Weird At My School,” “Bailey’s Walk,” and “Manta Ray”). But the performance really began the moment Deal started the familiar bassline for “Debaser,” prompting a deafening uproar from the noticeably older crowd. As advertised, the Pixies proceeded to blaze through every track on Doolittle in order, from before-their-time hits like “Monkey Gone To Heaven” and “Here Comes Your Man” to the lesser-known fillers like “No. 13 Baby” and “Silver.”

Always a frontman of few words, Francis left most of the between-song banter to Deal, who barely let a glowing smile leave her face for the entire set. As if to backhandedly apologize for the record’s less captivating live tracks (say, “Silver”), Deal prefaced a handful of the songs with disclaimers like “We’re going to play all of them,” and “Now we’re getting into the deeper cuts.” But that’s not to say the set lacked stimulation—far from it. The inspired karaoke-esque rendition of “Hey,” for instance, sparked a full-blown sing-along. (You really don’t see phrases like “WHORES IN MY BED” streaming across the backdrop of a rock show enough these days.)

Following a three-minute curtain call, the band returned to the stage for a brief two-song encore, featuring the somewhat lethargic UK Surf version of “Wave Of Mutilation” and “Into The White,” arguably the band’s most underappreciated recording. In the end, the crowd refused to go home quietly without its requisite dose of early hits—all of which were unveiled in the second encore. Francis awkwardly scatted through an improvised version of “Where Is My Mind?” followed by “Gigantic” and “Caribou.” In the evening’s first truly unexpected maneuver, the four members returned to their instruments after a sequence of bows for a balls-to-the-wall take on the scream-laden “Nimrod’s Son,” a common favorite among longtime Pixiphiles and easily the night’s most impressive performance.

A young Mick Jagger once famously said that he would rather be dead than singing "Satisfaction" when he was 45. It’s a hidden curse of superstardom: Even one’s most brilliant creation is doomed to grow stale eventually, if only to its creator. In that respect, perhaps the Pixies should be grateful for Doolittle’s lack of immediate commercial success—or else they probably wouldn’t still have so much fun performing it, a vibe that the band emanated throughout the show. For that reason, The A.V. Club would like to thank the record-buying public of the late '80s and early '90s on behalf of all those in attendance last night. We owe you one.

http://app.avclub.com/dc/articles/pixies-at-dar-costitution-hall,35877