Pixies at once excelled at traditional rock 'n' roll and made fun of it at the Paramount Monday, playing the entirety of its sexual, violent 1989 album "Doolittle." The sold out crowd screamed for every song and seemed to take the concert as a straight-up spectacle of sound and fury.

The band is credited with inventing alternative rock in America, and after years of limited appreciation is more popular now than it was in its heyday. The "Doolittle" tour is a nostalgic cash-in, but it's not The Beach Boys in the '80s. Today's Pixies do not disgrace yesterday's Pixies.

The band played "Doolittle" expertly and with all its intentionally psychotic-sounding wildness preserved, in fine playing shape if slightly older and fatter than before. It was unclear if the frothing audience cared just how complicated a record "Doolittle" is, or was there just to rock out. It was also unclear whether or not that mattered.

The star of the show was blank-faced, black-clad guitarist Joey Santiago. He strangled his electric guitar gracefully, just like he does on record, and in one extended solo, affirmed and confounded his badassness by not only showing how little creativity other guitarists put into their styles, but also how his own tools—that sound and fury—can be empty gestures.

It was during "Vamos," a furious rock song not actually on "Doolittle." The rest of the band kept a brisk, melody-less beat—Kim Deal on bass, David Lovering on drums, Charles "Frank Black" Thompson laying off vocals and rhythm guitar for a bit—when Santiago took the spotlight. Attacking his Les Paul in terse, bird-like flashes, he played pretty much the opposite of a fluid, scale-based blues-rock solo. Santiago manipulated feedback static buzz, hit his strings with Lovering's drum stick to make a clanging roar, and clawed at the end of his fretboard, creating a sound like a dolphin pod in mid-slaughter. After looking over to Thompson with an expression that seemed to say, "I don't know what to do next," for his finale, Santiago played a slow, seething version of the "Jeopardy" TV show theme song.

It was guitar solo as "guitar solo," an exercise in expression that avoided hitting any traditional sweet spots. By the time "Jeopardy" happened, Santiago had gone fully sarcastic.

But then he pulled out of his absurd spiral and it was right back into "Vamos," Deal and Lovering pumping along, Thompson screaming his head off in Spanish about moving to California and playing on the beach, as if that were a terrifying prospect.

With the exception of the fact that Thompson's guitar was too loud, Pixies' "Doolittle" songs sounded great. Album bookends "Debaser" and "Gouge Away" came off like sibling destroyers, the former gleeful, the latter ominous. Slow centerpiece "Monkey Gone to Heaven" was every bit as epic and heavy as the album version.

Through all the songs, Thompson followed Santiago's lead and replicated his tics and quirks from the "Doolittle" recording. The audience followed along with hiccup-screams and rhythmic heavy breathing. It must be noted Thompson's screams on "Tame," the most shocking part of "Doolittle," hit hard.

"Hey" was everyone's favorite song. The spare slow-dance number about whores in Thompson's head was greeted with a word-for-word sing-along from everyone in the Paramount, aided by selected lyrics projected on a screen behind the band. Of all Pixies songs, it has Thompson's most naked, muscular vocals, and the best bass line of Deal's career. Everyone's second favorite song was "Here Comes Your Man," a tune so rote in its pop jangle that Pixies almost didn't leave it on "Doolittle." The silliest song of the evening was "La La Love You," which seemed more celebrated for its catchiness than it's intentional stupidity.

The Paramount audience took Pixies as rhythms, riffs, and screams. And for a rock show, maybe that was better than considering what was happening on stage as some sort of conceptual statement-making. Really, it was and it wasn't.

After taking two encores and coming to the front of the stage to wave and bow for ecstatic superfans, it looked like Deal, Lovering, Thompson, and Santiago were happy to be happy, and smart enough not to ask why they were received so rapturously. They took the praise and walked away.