It’s refreshing to be surrounded by drunk gen-Xers wearing ear plugs and Sebedoh T-shirts. Sunday night at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago, while Washington, D.C., by way of New York band, the Walkmen played to a half-packed crowd I overheard conversations about bad babysitters, funky marijuana, the sad state of post-90s indie rock and how “the Aragon never charged six bucks for a beer when I was going to shows.”

The Pixies had reunited, and within the time it took Walkmen singer Hamilton Leithauser to stumble drunkenly through his band’s set, the Aragon had filled with throngs of Generation X’s finest.

MTV was first to break the news of the reunion Sept. 9, 2003, and a year and two months later, the influential rock group galloped through the Midwest, selling out five consecutive shows in Chicago, not to mention all the other dates on a four-month nationwide tour. Despite the cliché, the Pixies are back in a big way. The group found a slew of hot opening acts in Chicago alone. Jazz pranksters the Bad Plus and the city’s local rock stalwarts, Urge Overkill, opened later in the week, but the Walkmen held their own. The buzz was noticeable while the band (made up of ex-Jonathan Fire*Eater members) slammed into “We’ve Been Had,” a tongue-in-cheek track with a catchy piano hook and wandering train-of-thought lyrics. Half the crowd nodded along (another great benefit of the Gen-Xers who refrained from junior high moshing in favor of stolid, condensed head and knee movements) while the other half complained about the group’s selloutitude regarding a certain heavy rotation Saturn commercial.

But moments away from seeing the Pixies for the first time, I couldn’t help but notice how much of the Walkmen’s music was influenced by the group. In fact, who didn’t sound a bit like the Pixies in some way or another? Frank Black’s hyperactive vocals, which could growl, whisper and whimper within the same moment — used simply as another instrument and allowing Black to topple into his own strange world of intergalactic hipsters, mythical monuments and alien beings lost on earth, all of it was instrumental to each one of those ninth-grade dweebs that picked up a guitar and squeaked out some ultra-freak melody in the early 90s. Joey Santiago’s blistering and percussive guitarwork revealed that punk’s powerchord prowess was too constrictive and that solos didn’t have to stop when the singer came back in. David Lovering’s thundercloud percussives led the way for the ever-present alternative rock formula of soft verse, loud chorus. And most importantly, Kim Deal’s pounding bass lines laid the foundation for almost every popular rock tune plopped onto the radio waves during the heyday of Lollapalooza summers and body-pierced seventh graders sporting shredded denim and obnoxiously dyed hair.

The lights dropped away and the band took the stage, looking fatter, balder and somewhat uncomfortable. Black and Deal’s turmoil is legendary, and few music mags thought the group would actually make it this far. I have a quote from some ancient issue of Rolling Stone taped to my bedroom door in Northbrook, Ill., where Frank Black says he would only reunite the Pixies if a family member needed a transplant procedure.

But as the opening chords of “Bone Machine” swooped through the Aragon Ballroom, with its neo-medieval, outdoor façade and fluttering faux-star encrusted ceiling hanging overhead, the scene was basically legendary.

Black’s vocals were tentative at first, faltering during “Bone Machine,” “Is She Weird” and “U-Mass,” but finally coming back as the group ripped into “Monkey Gone To Heaven.” The audience enthusiasm was undeniably potent. Black’s words were shadowed syllable for syllable by the eager crowd throughout most of the set. The band stuck to its early work, pulling out an amazing amount of tracks from the first two proper full-lengths, Surfer Rosa (10 songs of 28) and Doolittle (11 songs). And Black’s unique vocal delivery hit hardest on the sexualized ranting/swooning of “No. 13 Baby” and “Hey.” Deal’s bass only broke tempo a few times, most notable during “Gauge Away” (the track that supposedly inspired the dynamic changes for “Smells Like Teen Spirit”). And Santiago indulged in a slightly underwhelming bout of feedback noise-pondering during “Nimrod’s Son,” leaving Lovering (who probably remained the most constant musically) pounding away at a frantic pace.

Every song flowed smoothly, with little to no stage banter early on in the show, the Pixies bombarded the crowd with a nonstop barrage, jumping from the chilled-out B-side staple, “Wave of Mutilation (UK Surf)” (played directly after the group pulled out the original Doolittle version) to “Nimrod’s Son,” a bombastic punk tune from Come on Pilgrim. Late in the set, the group dropped a few fan favorites. Covers of Neil Young’s “Winterlong” and the strange-beautiful “In Heaven (Lady in the Radiator),” from David Lynch’s “Eraserhead” fit perfectly among originals like “Where is My Mind?” and live touchstone track “Vamos.” Only rarities like “Into the White” were missing.

After the audience came down from the swaggering aural high of “Where is My Mind?” the band stood onstage during what usually would have been the encore break, exchanging awkward hugs like they had just slept with a long lost friend, unaware or consciously oblivious of the consequences. Will there be a new album? Another tour? Would Black control his word-vomit attacks against Deal? Who knows, but by the time Frank Black, Kim Deal, Joey Santiago and David Lovering had strapped themselves back onto their instruments and busted into the six-minute, Deal-heavy closer, “Gigantic,” no one in the Aragon could have cared less. Everyone was enthralled and in love with the Pixies.

**Set List**

Pixies live at the Aragon Ballroom, Chicago, Ill., Nov. 14, 2004

1. Bone Machine
3. Is She Weird
5. U-Mass
7. Monkey Gone To Heaven
9. Cactus
11. Caribou
13. No. 13 Baby
15. Broken Face
17. Crackity Jones
19. Isla De Encanta
21. Something Against You
23. Hey
25. Mr. Grieves
27. I Bleed
29. Velouria
31. Dead
33. Gauge Away
35. Tame
37. River Euphrates
39. Debaser
41. Wave of Mutilation
43. Wave of Mutilation (UK Surf)
45. In Heaven (Lady in the Radiator)
47. Winterlong
49. Nimrod’s Son
51. Vamos
53. Where Is My Mind?
23. Encore Break
28. Gigantic