For too long we've been missing the perfect ugly beauty of the Pixies. But the band that launched a thousand '90s bands, much like the Velvet Underground in the '70's, is back. And intense as ever, careening straight away into a full set of blazers, the patented Pixie blowback.
 
Black Francis / Frank Black still scowls, Kim Deal still smiles and Joey Santiago still puts to shame any striving guitarist out there. The Pixies sound is so fierce it needs no histrionic or stylish show, the delivery is the dynamic, and the playing and the sound is just as fresh as it was yesterday.
 
After crushing through twelve unmissables (set list below) they finally relent on the first chords of Debaser: "It's debaser, right?" Black says, giving Joey a friendly eye. A laugh and they launch back into it. Black still has the scream, the yaps, the voice to rock a song back and forth between its extremes, even though he always looked like my uncle if he shaved his head. Kim still disarms with the childish innocence of her voice, while singing of dirty deeds and fascinations. And the Pixies still shred their happy progressions with implied aggression. There was always something about the unexpectedness of the sound that came from such an unassuming facade.

That was what bound the Pixies and cemented them for time, the crazed juxtoposition of extremes: whisper to a scream, the smile/the grimace, innocence and experience, the restraint and the abandon, the swoon and the grind, the playfulness that fights back the menace.

The band vamos's with a guitar workshop by Joey on proper feedback while David Lovering knocks out the backbeat without end. And after the last note they all stop appreciatively at the front, Black sucking down on a beer as he faces the first audience in Japan to witness the timeless Pixies.

Bone Machine
Crackity Jones
Broken Face
Isla De Encanta
Take Off Yr Dress
Monkey Gone to Heaven
UMASS
Velouria
I Bleed
No. 13 Baby
Wave of Mutilation
Dead
Debaser
Gouge Away
Hey (?)
Chained
Gigantic
Caribou
Where Is My Mind (In Heaven Intro, Kim Deal)
Here Comes Your Man
Nimrod's Son
?
Vamos