Take note that it’s Black Francis, not Frank Black who’s coming to town this month. While the two have a lot in common— for starters, they inhabit the same body—they tend to play different music. While Black’s explored everything from synth-pop to garage punk to Americana, Francis usually stays in the spirit of his regular band, the Pixies.

Black Francis plays the Old U.S. Mint on May 5. (photo: Will Fresch)

That group split up in 1992 after helping invent indie rock—or at least, giving it a healthy shot of surrealism. And they’ve been on an on-off reunion tour for the past ten years, playing bigger venues than they did first time around, all without recording any new material (though they seem to float the possibility every year). That hasn’t kept Francis from being remarkably prolific in the past few years: He’s devoted a CD to songs by the Dutch punker Herman Brood, and through his website released five full discs worth of music written for the 1920’s horror film The Golem. He may draw from this material in town; then again he might just howl his way through a set of Pixies classics.

Francis will have two notable guests for this gig. LA native Kim Shattuck was frontwoman of the Muffs, one of the great lost bands of the ‘90s underground. NYC‘s Reid Paley is a running partner from Francis’ Boston days, when his group the Five opened for the Pixies and vice versa. If you’re Facebook friends with Paley you probably noticed that his updates nearly always say the same thing—“laughing in the face of life’s unrelenting ugliness”— which tells you a lot about his songwriting.