POP MUSIC REVIEW : Pixies’ Black Francis Works Up a Vocal Lather

Memo to Jack Nicholson, Robert De Niro and other masters of manic performance: Don’t look back, because somebody might be gaining on you.

That somebody is a plump, doughy-faced young man from Boston who goes by the name of Black Francis. Francis (real name Charles Thompson IV) hardly moved his body as he fronted the Pixies on Saturday night at a packed Crawford Hall on the UC Irvine campus. Instead, he contorted his voice for 80 minutes until it had passed through all the stations of the cross, probed each circle of hell and otherwise served as tour guide for an extended journey to the center of a very strange mind.

Francis barked and yapped and moaned and screamed, in Spanish as well as in English, letting loose the sounds of pain and surprise and animal urgency that we’d probably all go around making if we didn’t have to keep up a veneer of common civility. The Pixies’ method is to hack away the crust of custom and indifference that usually protects us from the otherwise unbearably searing onslaught of experience.

That emotional extremism is what has made the Pixies’ three albums special and earned them as much critical applause as any of their current peers in college/alternative-rock circles. It is one thing, though, for a singer to go over the edge in the recording studio, where all that’s required is to psyche oneself for one psychodramatic take, and quite another to replicate the feat on song after song during a concert. The Pixies’ reputation as a live band hasn’t matched their acclaim as a recording band--understandably so, because few performers can be expected consistently to peel back the skin and uncover the nerve endings that are set aquiver in almost all of their songs.

At Crawford Hall, Black Francis quivered like some psychic tuning fork, working himself into a clenched lather on each song. Or, more accurately, working his voice into that lather. While not exactly straitjacketing himself, Francis used much less body English than one would expect of a performer howling out the feelings in the Pixies’ songs. Almost all the time, he simply stood at the microphone, playing his guitar and singing with his eyes and face scrunched up.

In a way, it was fitting that Francis merely sang like a madman instead of running about like one. Coursing through his songs is a deep discomfort with physicality. “This human form, where I was born, I now repent,” he sang in “Caribou.” On “Wave Of Mutilation,” the idea of human flesh disintegrating into formless matter gives rise not to horror but to a song of anthem-like affirmation. In Francis’ world, decomposition is the path to immortality.

Running headlong into this abnegation of the body is the blazing libido that rises up in many other Pixies songs. It’s that clash that moves the band so far from the routine of ordinary life, where we try to smooth over such contradictions, and so deep into a naked tumult of unresolved feeling.

If Francis had spent the whole show screaming and cackling, the Pixies’ act would quickly have worn thin. But he was expert at shifting registers and vocal textures, so that a low growl would turn into a high cry. He also did a good deal of solid, straightforwardly tuneful singing in a clear, strong voice. But the screams were what drove the mania, in peak moments such as “Monkey Gone to Heaven,” which ended with Francis howling out apocalyptic numerology in his own skewed take on the Book of Revelations.

Bassist Kim Deal was an ideal foil for Francis. Her backup singing and shared vocal leads were airy enough to cushion his rough edges but also wild and trenchant enough in their own right to egg him on. While the other Pixies were pictures of intensity, Deal, with her perpetual smile, was an embodiment of sheer satisfaction in performing.

Lead guitarist Joey Santiago was an impassive, stolid presence but his bone-white Les Paul always stirred sonic motion. Santiago’s palette of sounds ranged from feedback whines to catchy riffing, all of it applied with skill and control that helped take the music to the edge without driving it over a cliff into formless noisemaking. Drummer David Lovering’s thrash beats, gallops and metallic thuds kept the crowd in front of the stage roiling through much of the show.

The Pixies blazed through 31 songs, including several that don’t appear on their albums. While one might quibble that a few too many of those were fast, thrashing, noisy workouts, stylistic variety was nevertheless a strength of the show.

In a neat symmetry, the band opened and closed with modern surf rock--starting with a Surftones’ cover, and finishing the pre-encore set with their own “Tony’s Theme,” a wild, hard-driving update of the old surf-instrumental standard “Pipeline.” In between the Pixies explored a range of other sources. “Here Comes Your Man,” tacked a zesty Tex-Mex guitar figure onto a zesty pop song that recalled the lighter side of the Velvet Underground (Santiago’s guitar-noise walls showed the influence of the Velvets’ darker fabrications). The sinister “Mr. Grieves” began with a reggae beat a la Elvis Costello’s “Watching the Detectives” and ended with the moaning slog of a New Orleans funeral march. The encore, “Into the White,” was closer to the approach of the Pixies’ fellow alternative-rock darlings Sonic Youth--a combination of throbbing, swarming guitars and an incantatory lead vocal by Deal.

Those stylistic connections to the past served as the anchor for a highly charged performance that took off into the darkness and fascination of our uncharted emotions.