Pixies frontman Black Francis began Friday’s concert at MGM Music Hall at Fenway with an invitation to step into a time machine set to 1990.
“The sun was still shining brightly on the college rock era,” he said at the band’s first of two consecutive Boston shows. And while there might have been a touch of cynicism in the Pixies frontman’s words — the band would fracture just before they could truly reap the benefits of the alternative explosion they had helped ignite — it wasn’t hard to feel a twinge of nostalgia.
Not if you were a teenager at the time, anyway. And it was for those now-50-somethings that the concert was laser-focused, with full playthroughs of “Bossanova” and 1991’s “Trompe le Monde.” Those two albums might not be as unassailable and world-shaking as “Surfer Rosa” or “Doolittle,” the records that made the Pixies legends, but they imprinted deeply enough in the hearts of fans that some of them were singing along word for word.
The galloping western/surf chug “Cecilia Ann” burst out of the gate, and “Velouria” didn’t roar so much as scream, while the short and sweet “Allison” played as a beach-party rave. Joey Santiago spat out little curlicues on his guitar as bassist Emma Richardson dug a trench deep enough for “Is She Weird” to move through, and Santiago’s ringing two-note figure in “The Happening” repeated so much that it began to sound like shattered glass. The guitars were mixed hot enough throughout to give them a visceral, tactile charge.
“Havalina” signaled the end of “Bossanova,” but there was no time to linger on what might have been a nearly serene comedown; “Here comes ‘Trompe le Monde,’” said Francis. (The ringed planets hanging behind the band as their only stagecraft rotated to become the giant eyeballs of that album’s cover.) The warped, art-rock wallop of the title track, and the dead-eyed roar and strangled leads of “Planet of Sound” unspooled quickly, and when manic screamer “The Sad Punk” slowed down, it felt drunk, with the instruments wobbling against one another.
Since the abrupt ending of “Trompe le Monde” closer “The Navajo Know” would have made for an unsatisfying sendoff, Pixies sweetened the pot, first with the dreamy and harsh spiral of “In Heaven” and then with gimmes “Here Comes Your Man” and “Where Is My Mind?” plus “Into the White,” a b-side trifle that they still played the hell out of.
The house lights came on in full during that last song and remained up for the wild “Debaser,” where David Lovering’s drums felt like they were going to spring right off the stage and the crowd exploded every time Francis spat out the lyric “chien!”
They didn’t need it to be dark to imagine that it was still 1990. They were already there.
Momma opened with a pitch-perfect recreation of ’90s-style alt/indie that they could have thawed out from 30 years ago. Their gauzy churn might have landed them a gig at the “Buffy The Vampire Slayer” rock club the Bronze, with a touch of Veruca Salt in their dissociated harmonies.
PIXIES
With Momma. At MGM Music Hall at Fenway, Friday.
Marc Hirsh can be reached at officialmarc@gmail.com or on Bluesky @spacecitymarc.bsky.social
Here’s the setlist from Friday night, according to setlist.fm. Keep checking back as the list continues to update.
Leave feedback about this