Black is the new Black

At precisely 10pm on 13 April, 2004, four folks hitting their forties took the stage of Minneapolis's 700-capacity Fine Line Music Cafe ('A Slightly Classier Place To See Live Music'). A fat, bald man began sweating almost instantly and screeching with his eyes shut: 'I was talking to peachy peach about kissy kiss, he bought me a soda, tried to molest me in the parking lot, hep hep hep.'

The song was 'Bone Machine' and this was Black Francis - Charles Michael Kitteridge Thompson IV to his family - and he was part piggy, part giant malevolent thumb from Spy Kids, and all returning hero. To his left stood Kim Deal, a little heftier now but still possessed of a schoolgirl fringe and a bashful grin, plunking out a nape-tickling bass line. To his right, Joey Santiago, also bald these days and also smiling warily, who began to pull curly riffs from his guitar. To the rear, drummer David Lovering, hairier, scraggier and beaming, who laid into his drumkit like a teenage tyro.

The Pixies were back, as noisy, inspirational, weird and, as was quickly apparent, as vital as ever. There aren't many bands for whom you would spend $350 on a concert ticket on eBay, before travelling halfway round the world to see.

'Pixies Sellout' said the tour T-shirts on sale at the entrance to the venue. Below this wisecracking legend, the detail of the biggest story in indie-rock since the death of Kurt Cobain: 11 years after their acrimonious split, the Pixies have reformed for an initial set of 14 club-sized gigs in remote North America (hello Saskatoon!), culminating with an appearance at California's Coachella Festival before hitting Britain, Europe and the Far East for huge sold-out shows.

Since their demise, the Pixies have been publicly celebrated by David Bowie, Blur and Radiohead, as well as every US rock act of the past decade following the Nirvana singer's confession that he was 'basically trying to rip off the Pixies' when he wrote 'Smells Like Teen Spirit'.

In 2001, Black said he'd be up for a reunion 'if I were penniless or a family member needed a kidney transplant'. Last summer he admitted the rancour had abated enough for the former members to sometimes gather for a jam, 'but it's not for public consumption'. He was afraid, he said, that any reunion 'would be a big, big failure'.

But reunite they have. 'A sell-out? No fucking way!' Jason Hamilton, 33, of Minneapolis had declared before the lights dimmed. 'It's about time the Pixies came back. Their music never went away!'

Certainly, there was nothing dated-sounding about their 80-minute, 27-song set. 'Wave Of Mutilation', in its rousing pop incarnation and in the hauntingly slow 'UK surf' version they played in the encore, showed how the band's traditional lack of on-stage action was always compensated for by their vivid songs.

'U-Mass' was fierce, taut and shouty at the chorus, and laid clear Nirvana's debt to the Pixies. 'Monkey Gone To Heaven' showcased the still-sublime interplay between Francis's banshee shriek and Deal's angelic trill. Versions of Neil Young's 'Winterlong' and 'In Heaven', old live standbys, demonstrated how easily the band had fallen back in together a dozen years since last sharing a stage. 'Nimrod's Son', with its hollered cry of 'you are the son of incestuous union', reeking of both blasted desert and sulphurous sex, showed how the closest art to that of the Pixies is not the music of another band but the films of David Lynch.

On they roared, occasionally goofy and nervous-looking, their performance underpinned by their peerless canon: anthems included 'Debaser', 'Gigantic', 'Gouge Away' and 'Velouria,' followed by the thrashy incantation of traditional set-closer 'Into The White'. These weren't blasts of nostalgia but rousingly evocative modern rock classics, delivered with youthful zest.

'Perfect, beautiful,' beamed Michael Sack, 30, from St Paul, at the end. The $300 he'd spent on a ticket was worth every cent. 'To my generation, underground music was so important. The Pixies really don't know the impact they had.'

There might be no second-acts in American lives but what did Fitzgerald know about keeping the punk flame? Even in this year of comebacks - Morrissey, George Michael, Prince - the return of the Pixies is a big deal. Welcome back. What took ya?