It takes confidence to open a concert with four 20-year-old B‑sides. Patience with Pixies was rewarded, though, as this first of four London shows was billed as the chance to hear classic 1989 album Doolittle track by track.

Having influenced everyone from Nirvana downwards who wanted to combine sweet melodies with brutally unhinged guitars and vocals, the second Pixies album has barely aged. The band, too, were still recognisable by their backlit silhouettes, especially cannon ball-like Black Francis.

The biggest change seems to be a decision to stop fighting. After a split due to the fractious relationship between rival songwriters Francis and Kim Deal, a triumphant 2004 reunion promised new material that never came (apart from unimpressive lone single Bam Thwok) so now they appear to have embraced nostalgia act status.

Whole-album gigs are the live equivalent of deluxe box sets. Francis left Deal to do the jolly between-song banter, perhaps unable to snap out of being the yelping, gibbering psychotic he must become to occupy these songs. He howled and barked through Debaser, with its line about “slicing up eyeballs”, then roared like bomber taking off on Tame. A huge video screen illustrated his scorched imagination with flickering images of animal skulls, mannequins, a ventriloquist’s dummy and a hangman’s noose.

Aside from the shots of their four heads nodding along to the pure pop interlude Here Comes Your Man, it was harrowing stuff, and still odd to hear songs such as Wave of Mutilation being sung en masse on a wave of adulation.

Wonderful though it was to relive these songs in order, there remains a slight sense of detachment to such concerts, a feeling that neither band or audience is existing in the moment. Extra hits such as Bone Machine and Gigantic were added in the encores, ushering us back to the present reality that Pixies remain a formidable live band.