Black Francis, leader of the seminal alternative-rock band the Pixies, has little time for nostalgia.
Once in a while, the 50-year-old singer/songwriter would come across an old band photo and reflect for a moment — but no longer. And if it is a truly resonant relic, he might post the shot on his Facebook page.
But ask Black Francis to look back at his band's undeniable place in rock 'n' roll history, and expect a tepid response.
"Oh, I wonder just how great I really am?" Black Francis said, in a higher, mocking pitch, on the phone last week from a tour stop in Vermont. "It's just exhausting. It's like, whatever, man. Let's go see the 'Mad Max' movie."
His nonchalance makes sense, given the band's current situation. After more than a decade-long disbandment, the quartet arguably sparked music's now-ubiquitous reunion-tour trend in 2004, and has not slowed down since. While other reunited acts have temporarily regained relevancy by strictly playing early material, the Pixies are now supporting a 2014 album of new material with a busy tour schedule, while simultaneously writing new material.
For the Pixies — who play Merriweather Post Pavilion on Saturday as part of the two-day Sweetlife Festival and 9:30 Club in Washington on Sunday — topics like legacy and trend-setting matter little. To hear the members tell it, they are too busy concentrating on the group's present to consider its past, no matter how great it was.
"We don't know what's going on," said guitarist Joey Santiago in a separate phone interview. "We're at the center of the storm per se, but it's not a storm. I guess you would say, I don't know, a toilet. We're in there, trying to avoid going down the sewer line."
The Pixies' consistent lack of vanity speaks to the band's history, which began when Black Francis (born Charles Thompson IV) and Santiago met as students at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. They — along with bassist and vocalist Kim Deal and drummer David Lovering — formed a following the old-fashioned way by relentlessly touring around the Boston area, Santiago said.
The right people eventually heard what this clever, catchy and hard-to-classify band was playing, and soon enough, records like 1987's "Come On Pilgrim," 1988's "Surfer Rosa" and 1989's "Doolittle" became favorites with the college-rock radio crowd and beyond.
Alex Cortright, morning show host of Towson-based public radio station WTMD, which plays indie- and alt-rock on heavy rotation, said "Surfer Rosa" first made him a Pixies fan. While many mention the group's influence on Nirvana (in 1994, Kurt Cobain famously admitted to Rolling Stone that "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was his attempt "to rip off the Pixies"), Cortright said he hears the Pixies' DNA in a wide range of acts.
"They were hugely influential. You think, of course, of Nirvana, but it's hard to imagine certain other acts developing in their absence the way they did," Cortright said. "It could be PJ Harvey or Arcade Fire or even Jack White to a degree. On the other side of the pond, it's hard to imagine Radiohead or even Blur establishing themselves the way they did [without the Pixies]."
Cortright still hears new groups taking the Pixies' formula — "smart and catchy, while also being really kind of dark and threatening, which is a pretty delicious combination," he said — and making it their own.
"I think of younger acts today like this band out of London that I like, Wolf Alice," he said. "They certainly borrow from the Pixies' playbook pretty liberally, as so many have."
At one point, that playbook appeared exhausted. In 1993, after two more albums ("Bossanova," Santiago's favorite, and "Trompe le Monde"), an ill-fitting slot on U2's Zoo TV tour and growing tensions within the group, the Pixies broke up.
Other bands were formed (Francis released music as Frank Black and the Catholics, while Deal returned to her other group, the Breeders) and other pursuits were explored (Santiago began scoring for TV). But 11 years after the abrupt ending, the band reunited and returned to an industry suddenly willing to pay them amounts they never expected. That year, the Chicago Tribune reported the band expected to make more than $14 million in tour revenue.
The tour's success was a huge surprise, so the Pixies kept going. But at some point, Santiago said, new material was needed to feel like a working band.
Last April, the Pixies released "Indie Cindy," their first album since 1991. Even getting Black Francis to express his feelings about the latest record is no easy task. After an "I don't know" and "you know, whatever," the lead singer reluctantly offered some insight into how he views all of the Pixies' albums.
"If I'm going to toot my own horn, the record seemed pleasant enough to me, and so, I'm glad," Black Francis said. "It's the aim for artfully minded recording projects — to be entertaining and to fulfill the people that are going to be asked to listen to it. I think the band has done that with 'Indie Cindy.'"
The band accomplished something new this time around as well. "Indie Cindy" is the first Pixies record not to feature Deal, who unexpectedly left in the middle of its recording in 2013. Black Francis said he understands if Deal's departure is hard to swallow for longtime fans.
"The band was good before when Kim Deal was in it. Some people don't like to mess with the magical formula," he said. "We get that."
The exit was not enough to stop the band's progress. While Simon "Ding" Archer replaced Deal on the album, her touring replacement is now Paz Lenchantin, formerly of A Perfect Circle. With Lenchantin, Santiago said, "the chemistry is perfect." Lenchantin recently putting her own spin on Deal's parts is also encouraging, said Black Francis.
"The woman's got to play certain songs every time we play a show. At some point, you start to go, 'OK, I tried really hard to play it exactly how it is on the record, but now these guys aren't playing exactly how it is on the record either. I'm going to let myself be me and play,'" Black Francis said. "She's got her nuance and we appreciate it."
Scheduled to tour through June, the Pixies have been tinkering with new songs at soundchecks. Black Francis said it's not an ideal setting for writing music, but a few songs are beginning to take shape. Santiago hopes a follow-up to "Indie Cindy" will be released next year.
With the future addressed, a reporter sensed a second chance to get Black Francis to discuss the Pixies' role in helping to shape recent decades of rock music.
Could the singer be duped, just this one time, into pontificating?
"You're asking the wrong guy," he said. "All any artist can hope for is that people think that you're good. That's all I care about."
The statement was strong, and also revealing. Maybe too revealing, because Black Francis could not end without a final, self-deprecating note.
"I'm not real good with the hypothetical, and the sort of poignant nostalgia for a future that isn't there yet," Black Francis said with a laugh. "I've seen that movie too many times. I only do indie, man."