Like Big Star and the Velvet Underground before them, the Pixies are one of those seminal artists whose legend has only taken on more luster in their absence. Which explains the seismic wave of hyperventilating music geeks who greeted the news of the band's reunion tour last year, a tour that found the original lineup selling out concerts in venues larger than the ones they'd played in their initial run, before Nirvana, by its own admission, took the Pixies sound -- that whisper-to-a-scream dynamic with loads of distortion and passion and shrieking and not just rough but splintered edges -- to the pop charts, the bank and the masses.

	The Pixies: Kim Deal, Joey Santiago, David Lovering, Frank Black Click photo for larger image. The Pixies Where: Chevrolet Amphitheatre, Station Square. When: 8 tonight. Tickets: $35; 412-323-1919.

Formed in 1986 when two guitarists took an ad out in a Boston paper looking for a bassist into Husker Du and Peter, Paul and Mary, the Pixies recorded five trailblazing efforts before Black Francis -- as Frank Black was known in those days -- left the group in 1992, casually leaking the news to reporters before he'd even told the band.

So how does it feel to be sinking his teeth into "Wave of Mutilation," "Monkey Gone to Heaven" and "Gigantic" again after what he now looks back on as the band's 12-year sabbatical?

"I don't know how it feels," Black says. "There's a lot of muscle memory involved. It's not real poignant."

Not real poignant?

"No," he says. "We're playing some songs that we know how to play. I mean, it's great and everything. It's good. But I haven't really had a lot of epiphanies yet. Sometimes it just isn't like that. You don't have epiphanies. It's just like, 'Oh, yeah, I remember those tunes.' "

And have those tunes held up?

"For the most part," he says. "There's a couple that I feel a little sheepish about, but I suppose most of the ones I have mixed feelings about, we probably don't do them, either because I don't like the song or one of the other band members, probably [bassist] Kim [Deal], doesn't like it."

So, is the reunion fun at least?

"Oh, totally," he says.

And that's about as far as Black will go toward buying into all the hype surrounding the Pixies as the must-see act of 2005. Which is to say he sounds a whole lot more excited by the notion than he did a year before it happened, at which point he told a Rolling Stone reporter that sure, he'd get the Pixies back together -- as long as he was "penniless or a family member needed a kidney transplant."

When the magazine called him on the seeming change of heart last September, the guitarist brushed it off with a semi-joking, "I went to the psychiatrist and got some chill pills."

Still fielding "Why'd you do it?" questions on the latest leg of the post-chill-pill reunion tour, he says, "A certain set of circumstances in everyone's personal lives, I suppose, kind of made it fertile ground for that to happen again. I suppose that was really the main thing. But obviously it was an opportunity for us to go and earn some money."

And the way it's all turned out, apparently, people are only too happy to part with that money to see the Pixies -- Black, guitarist Joey Santiago, Deal and drummer David Lovering -- back in action in what some have no doubt called the Comeback Tour of the Pixies Millennium.

Asked if he expected the reaction to be as intense as it's been, Black says, "No, but the question sort of implies that I was sitting around thinking about it. I never really have expectations about that kind of thing because it's showbiz. I mean, I knew something was gonna happen. The records are in print. They sell. They've been keeping me afloat for over a decade since the breakup of the band, so somebody's buying those records out there."

While those Pixies records have been keeping Black afloat, his own solo career has been keeping him busy. He's about to hit the streets with an 11th solo album, "Honeycomb," in mid-July. He recorded the album in Nashville right before the Pixies hit the road last spring with backing by the legendary likes of Spooner Oldham and Steve Cropper.

"I guess I could sum it up," he says, "by saying that in general I felt pretty damn cool."

As to why he recorded in Nashville instead of just cutting the songs with his solo band, the Catholics, Black says, "Oh, it has its precedents, you know? Its well-established precedents. Bob Dylan. Neil Young. Most notably, Dylan, 1966, 'Blonde on Blonde.' "

In keeping with the spirit of those Dylan sessions, Cropper and the others did no preparation, learning Black's new songs as tape was rolling.

"What you're hearing on the record," Black explains, "is them playing and hearing the song for the first time in some cases. If not take one, then take two or three. Those guys work really fast. They don't want to rehearse. They want to play. If they're gonna play something, you might as well put the tape machine on 'record.' That's sort of their attitude."

They had, of course, heard Dan Penn's "Dark End of the Street" before. And they may have heard "Song of the Shrimp," one of Elvis' Hollywood moments. Black's own songs were mostly written after he'd already booked the trip to Nashville, but he isn't sure that had much impact on the writing.

"I can't say that I sat around and did anything in a specific way to tailor it," he says. "But I'm sure there must have been some sort of psychological effect."

The end result is a laid-back collection of songs that ultimately sound like they're cut from the same cloth as Black's other solo material even as the players do their best to make it sound like something from the early '70s. You can hear them not laboring over the songs' arrangements, and that only adds to the timeless appeal of the album, which is good because they didn't have the time to do it any other way. He had four days to cut the album and then it was off to the opening night of the Pixies tour.

"I felt pretty damn cool," says Black. "I mean, there I was, one minute, playing with Spooner Oldham and Steve Cropper and Reggie Young. Next minute, 'See you guys later, man. I've got a gig up the road.' 'Kim Deal, how the hell are you, man? It's been 10, 11 years? Good to see you. Let's rock.' That's pretty mind-blowing in terms of a career kind of experience, playing with legends, then doing a reunion tour with your old band that is being revered again for the second time of their career, after a 12-year sabbatical. It doesn't get any better than that."

You'd think the man -- born Charles Michael Ketteridge Thompson IV in 1965 -- would have some mixed emotions about the worshipful response he's been getting for dusting off these Pixies songs after spending the past 10 years or so releasing solo records that couldn't hope to cause that sort of fuss. But Black just shrugs it off.

"Again," he says, "that's show business. I'm tough when it comes to that."

And what's good for the Pixies, of course, could be good for the solo career, reflecting some attention back to "Honeycomb" through, for example, Pixies cover stories.

"Absolutely," Black admits. "If I can toot my own horn, though, you can even make the argument that while the Pixies legacy or whatever you want to call it, was intact, I think you can say that fortunately while my solo records especially after the first couple of them did not sell so well, I was always fortunate enough to get reviews everywhere in the world. So I always got noticed and mentioned, even if it was sort of in negative terms. So I think I can make the argument, too, that somehow keeping my face in the scene for all these years in a strange way has kind of helped the Pixies reunion. I kind of kept a certain kind of tension alive. It was sort of 'Here I am, the big poobah who broke up the band.' 'No, we don't care about your solo records. Shut up! Here he comes again.' So I was kind of like always in everybody's mind. It wasn't like I disappeared for 11 years and then ... 'We're back!' There was something about keeping the tension alive about whether or not the Pixies would ever get back together. Earlier on, the tension was 'Why did you guys break up?' And then, the tension mutated into 'Will you guys ever get back together?' So I kept that question alive, not through any sort of plan or vision of mine. It's just the way it worked out."

As for what the future may or may not hold for the Pixies and their fans, a lot of that depends on whether they can stand each other's company enough to keep it on the tracks.

When asked how the famously tension-riddled band has been getting along, Black responds with a blatantly insincere, "Just, you know, peaches and cream. Kisses and hugs."

As for the hopes and/or fears of a new Pixies album, it's "just loose talk" at this stage, he says.

But would he like to see it happen?

"Yeah," he says. "I mean, if it's good. If it's for the right reasons or whatever. We don't want to go be hacks. We don't want to be pandering. We want to really make it for ourselves. If we do it, we've got to become a little indie rock band again. We're not U2. We don't come from that ilk. We come from the shoegazing, wrinkled T-shirt, clubby kind of New England, East Coast 1980s reacting against the mainstream kind of thing. So we don't want to be like, 'Hey yeah, man, we're like really successful on our reunion tour. How can we do "Monkey Gone to Heaven" again?' We don't want to do that. That's just lame. We don't want to hire some hot rock producer to like, you know, make us sound contemporary or some [nonsense]."

So we shouldn't, then, expect a Pixies reunion effort, if it even sees the light of day, to feature a guest appearance by the likes of Justin Timberlake?

"Actually, that would be pretty good," Black responds, with a laugh. "See, that's extreme enough. It's a little subversive or something."