Stage Dive

Last Wednesday night, The Thrills came to Nashville to fulfill a daunting task: opening for the Pixies at Ryman Auditorium. The Ireland natives' fun-loving, American-themed songs amply fulfilled their duty as crowd-warmers. And while the band took a decent stab at their opportunity to stand on the Ryman's hallowed stage, offering memorable choruses and daydreamy melodies, the bustling audience treated them as best they could: as good filler music while waiting for the headliner, and a highly anticipated one at that.

After The Thrills' set, the Pixies strolled onstage unassumingly and went right into "Is She Weird," from Bossa Nova. There was no acknowledgement of the crowd, no explanation of the reunion, and throughout the show, they didn't chat much or interact with the audience. Instead, they zoomed through their catalogue, one song after the other—24 in all, plus a four-song encore. All told, they played maybe 90 minutes.

However reserved or businesslike their demeanor, it didn't feel as though the Pixies were reuniting just to cash in on their legendary status (though that might well be the case). Instead, they played like four people truly devoted making music, executing their lengthy set with self-assured precision and joy.

Their set highlighted what they did best during their late-'80s/early '90s heyday—not just the quiet verse/loud chorus dynamic that Kurt Cobain seized on with even greater success, but the frantic surfer-punk guitar textures, the soothing female backing vocals and the abstract, creepy, yet funny lyrics. Frank Black's spun through "Caribou" with ease, and his unrestrained screams in "Planet of Sound" and "Broken Face" camouflaged the fact that he'd aged more than a decade since he first performed these songs. Even still, his biting lyrics in songs like "U-Mass" evoked feelings of adolescent angst—though this might be because were teenagers when we first heard the Pixies.

In a rare few minutes of audience interaction, Black explained at one point that Deal was suffering from laryngitis and asked if she was in too much pain to sing. "I'm an artist," she quipped. "I'm always in pain." The crowd overcompensated for her malady by screaming out her backing vocals. Still, however raw her vocal cords, at the set's end, Deal giddily leapt into "Gigantic"—which, like everything else that night, was met with deafening applause.

The band feigned an exit, while the crowd clapped, yelled and banged the back of the wooden pews for an encore. Black switched to an acoustic guitar and played "Here Comes Your Man," the Pixies' biggest hit and probably one of their most uncharacteristic songs as well. On "Vamos," Joey Santiago poked a hole in the band's serious demeanor when he indulged in a few minutes of hammy guitar antics. After making a distorted racket, he set his guitar on a stand, whacked it with David Lovering's drumstick and then tossed the drumstick back to Lovering, who missed it. The whole routine might not have been so amusing if the band hadn't been seemed so intent, so focused the rest of the evening.

After "Where is My Mind?" the band left the stage for good. As the Ryman emptied, the crowd left with little doubt that the Pixies had fully staked their claim as a definitive modern rock band.