THE PIXIES at the Horseshoe, Sunday, June 7. Rating: NNNN

“Thank you, Robert Plant!” yelled one lucky fan as alt rock icons the Pixies plugged in – at the ’Shoe. We’d been waiting an hour and a half for the band to get on stage, but it hardly mattered. A cancelled tour date with the Zeppelin singer (who said he’d woken up “with a frog in his throat”) meant that instead of their planned ginormous amphitheatre opening set, the Pixies were about to play a much more intimate show.

And the Horseshoe version of the Pixies turned out to be an entirely different beast than the polished, veteran-rock-star version we got at Massey Hall a year and a half ago. With a crowd packed in like sardines and ready to mosh, and the band nearly elbow to elbow also (especially Black Francis and guitarist Joey Santiago, whose twin guitar work was awesome), the band played up their punk side – fast, dirty, loud and rambunctious, with Francis often screaming his barely audible lyrics over Santiago’s tidal waves of distortion. The group’s pace (with David Lovering on drums and newcomer Paz Lenchantin on bass) was relentless – barely a breath between songs.

Classic Pixies fans had plenty to sink their teeth into: the band tossed out Gouge Away early in the set and held Where Is My Mind? and Here Comes Your Man for later. And the integration of newer material – Bagboy, Silver Snail, Indie Cindy – was seamless.

It’s easy to see their enduring appeal to generations who grew up on Nirvana and Weezer after a more acoustic last third of the set, the band set off in a meandering, triumphant feedback improvisation during the encore, led by Santiago, who got tons o’ mileage out of patch cord experimentation and fretboard shredding.

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