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The Pixies

 (Hollywood Palladium; 4,000 capacity; $50.50)

By ANDREW BARKER

The Pixies played their 1989 album 'Doolittle' in its entirety Wednesday at the Hollywood Palladium.

Presented by Live Nation. Opened and reviewed Nov. 4, 2009; also Nov. 5, 6.
 
Band: Charles Thompson IV, Kim Deal, Joey Santiago, David Lovering. Also appearing: No Age.
 

Band reunions are always precarious propositions, tending to veer toward nostalgic irrelevance the longer they go on. Now entering the fifth year of their reunion stint, the Pixies gave fans every reason to be wary when, instead of a new album, they announced a tour to mark the 20th anniversary of their influential album "Doolittle" by playing it in its entirety. However, Wednesday night's tour opener at the Hollywood Palladium made all worries wonderfully irrelevant, with the Boston quartet delivering as exhilarating and flawless a rock show as Los Angeles is likely to see this year.

While many would argue that the more abrasive, Steve Albini-produced "Surfer Rosa" is a clearer articulation of the band's aesthetic, "Doolittle" (1989) was the album that perfectly paired the Pixies' surrealist intensity with their seemingly inadvertent gift for breezy pop hooks. More importantly, "Doolittle" is a dudless and impeccably sequenced record, a fact that became especially striking in last night's live setting.

But what was most striking about the show was just how normal the Pixies have come to sound over the past two decades. At the Palladium, respectable-looking couples cuddled and cheerfully sang along to twisted tone poems about toxic sludge, rape, Old Testament vengeance and suicidal Japanese businessmen driving their cars into the ocean -- and no one seemed to find this the least bit strange. Just as many a baby boomer experienced cognitive dissonance watching the Rolling Stones perform once-scandalous tunes for arenas full of families and politicians, so too must the thirty- and fortysomethings who saw the Pixies in their heyday reconcile the group's wildness with its current canonical status.

The classic-album-in-its-entirety trend has ceased to be noteworthy after so many iterations (everyone from Bruce Springsteen to Jay-Z to Dio having gotten in on the act), but the Pixies tackled the concept with characteristic unorthodoxy, playing every song from the "Doolittle" recording sessions, including B-sides and alternate arrangements. Certainly this must have entailed relearning material that the band rarely plays live -- or in the case of Ennio Morricone-esque mood piece "Silver," have never played live -- and the group seemed especially energized by the challenge, playing with a formidable sense of focus.

While wholesale reinvention was not on the agenda here, several songs were given considerably more room to breathe than on the recorded versions, and the net result was invariably positive. Bassist Kim Deal pushed her backing vocals on "Here Comes Your Man" way back into the pocket, and the breakdown sections of "Mr. Grieves" were slowed to a grinding, dragging cadence that made the song's sudden dynamic shifts all the more visceral.

With doughy frontman Charles Thompson (aka Frank Black, Black Francis) expressing his usual mute reserve between songs, it was left to Deal to engage with the audience, mostly in the form of preschool teacher-like asides and reassurances ("OK, we're still on side one now -- does anyone know what comes next?"). Staging concepts were simple yet extremely clever, and all the more appreciated considering that the group stood nearly motionless for most of the set.

The Pixies play two more nights at the Palladium, followed by a four-night residency at New York's Hammerstein Ballroom starting Nov. 23.