Going Through Changes With the Pixies : Pop music: The quartet changes from its trademark stream-of-consciousness to linear lyrics on its new album. The band’s 1991 tour starts today in Ventura.

Black Francis shrugged.

That was the initial response of the young leader of the Pixies when asked to comment on the statement in a new record company bio declaring that the quartet is “the most important band in rock ‘n’ roll.”

“I’m kinda like bummed it says that in our own bio,” said Francis, 26, whose real name, Charles Thompson, fits his baby-faced look better than his facetiously ominous stage name. “We may have our own niche in the evolving history of rock. But there is no ‘important’ band, except maybe the Beatles.”

He also shrugged when asked to comment on the almost linear quality of the lyrics of the songs on the band’s new album, “Trompe Le Monde,” a marked change from the abstract stream-of-consciousness that has been his trademark since the band first formed in Boston in 1986. (The Pixies begin their 1991 tour today at the Ventura Theatre, with a Los Angeles date expected in December.)

“Maybe I felt bored being abstract,” he said flatly, aimlessly strumming on a guitar. “Maybe I got better at writing songs. If you can make a song that people can relate to, that’s great.”

And he shrugged off other changes that have come with the band’s rise to alternative-rock prominence and even, yes, importance. Among the more notable: of the four members, only guitarist Joey Santiago still lives in Boston.

Francis has been living in the Los Angeles area for a couple years (he grew up in the South Bay), where drummer David Lovering also lives; bassist Kim Deal lives in the Midwest. The geographic fractionalization of the band, which prohibits any casual gatherings, bothers Francis not in the least.

“Why would I want to jam casually when I’m spending four months on a tour bus with them?” he said. “Rock is still like a hobby to me, but it’s not like we have to live in the same house like the Monkees.”

If Francis seems blase, he’s not. Just low-key. Though in his music he’s often explosive, singing his fragmented images sometimes in a psychotic wail, he’s always been low-key in conversation.

In past interviews he’s dismissed criticism without emotion, readily admitting that the band was a weak live act a couple years ago and accepting that last year’s “Bossanova” album was not up to the level of the group’s dynamic breakthrough, 1989’s “Doolittle.” And he just as easily passes up praise. In the past, when critics and fans read meaning into songs, he resolutely maintained that his lyrics really were meaningless abstractions.

Even his own artistic growth is a subject that he takes in stride--none of the calculated rationales and motives we’ve come to expect from rock artists.

“Pretty much, what comes, comes,” he said of his writing technique. “Most of the time it’s been so abstract, I never really thought about it much. This time it was neat to think, ‘Ooh! I’m kind of surfing on this sci-fi thing,’ and I was challenged. . . . I was able to make more sense in a linear way.

“We had one or two UFO songs on the last album and a planet on the cover and all of a sudden people call us a UFO band. So this time I said, ‘Well, if we’re a UFO band, I might as well write songs about UFOs.’ And from there I wrote about space, flying, aerodynamics, travel, architecture. They’re all nice subjects.”

Still, he seems to not care much if his messages get through.

“In terms of what Joe Blow thinks about it, I’m not sure,” he said. “I just hope he’s entertained and gets his money’s worth. That means we’ve done something good.”