GOTHIC REVIVAL

“WE LIKE THINGS THAT SOUND A LITTLE ‘OFF’ OR UNSETTLING,” PIXIES SINGER, RHYTHM GUITARIST AND PRIMARY SONGWRITER BLACK FRANCIS EXPLAINS.

“WE DON’T WANT it to sound wrong with a capital W, but if you can get away with having one little thing that just kind of makes it a little bit weird, like, ‘What’s going on here?,’ that’s a good thing.”

At this point, the Pixies have made a career — make that two careers — out of doing things that are a little bit weird. The Massachusetts-based band’s first run, highlighted by classic late-’80s albums like Surfer Rosa and Doolittle, established them as something of an indie-rock Velvet Underground — not especially successful in the mainstream, but massively influential to the generation or two of rock acts that followed in their wake. (Once, when describing the quiet-verse/loud-chorus format of Nirvana’s hit “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” Kurt Cobain famously said he was “basically trying to rip off the Pixies.”)

That influence only grew after the Pixies broke up in 1993, to the point that, upon reuniting a decade later, they received a hero’s welcome, playing to crowds that were