The singalongs were certainly more vociferous than the last time that the Pixies played T.T. the Bear’s Place in the ’80s. The Boston-bred band’s surprise show on Thursday at that soon-to-close Cambridge rock club (announced earlier in the day and quickly sold out after a long line at the Orpheum for tickets) lived up to its hype — in a sense, befitting a tiny club show for a major act. It brought to mind the Replacements’ recent Converse Rubber Tracks show at the Sinclair as well as Aerosmith’s 1994 set for the opening of its Lansdowne Street club Mama Kin.

Of course T.T.’s is smaller than both of those rooms with a capacity of about 300. And the Pixies played it up-close-and-personal like back in the day — no security pit, stripped down equipment, and the T.T.’s-monogrammed cityscape mural behind the band instead of the mirror wall from May’s Boston Calling, the Pixies’ largest-ever local audience since breaking from the clubs and opening for U2 at the Garden in 1992. Personal is also a relative term for the Pixies, who took the stage with their typical laissez-faire attitude and played for an hour and 45 minutes with nary a word about T.T.’s or anything else and eschewing eye contact except for (Kim Deal replacement) bassist Paz Lenchantin, who took it all in with a beaming gaze and sported a red flower atop her bass in contrast to the band’s mostly black outfits.

In turn, the Pixies casually opened with a few lesser-known songs from their 1987 debut Come On Pilgrim, including the expletive-spiked “Nimrod’s Son,” like any alt-rock garage band playing T.T.’s on a Thursday night. But the energy began to rise with “Break My Body,” its lessened arena-show dynamics replaced by fans chanting the “Hold my bones” chorus. The buildup continued with a loping, extra-slow “Wave of Mutilation,” sing-along “Here Comes Your Man” (with fans drowning out Lenchantin’s “So long, so long” chorus) and the woozy blues “Mr. Grieves,” all from 1989’s landmark Doolittle. Frontman Black Francis even broke into smiles, first at his bandmates, then at the microphone to a sustained ovation. Finally, 45 minutes into the group’s career-spanning set, Francis switched from acoustic to electric guitar to unleash the night’s double-barreled highpoint in “Gouge Away” (with lead guitarist Joey Santiago lending bent-string cries and drummer Dave Lovering crashing into cymbal fills) and “UMass,” a nod to the two guitarists’ Amherst roots with the full-bore chorus “It’s educational!” And the pace picked up with punk intensity in tunes like “Something Against You” (no surprise there that Nirvana cited the Pixies as inspirational) and “Tame,” as Francis got his full scream on, offset by more melodic nuggets “Monkey Gone to Heaven,” “Caribou” and “Debaser.”

The Pixies whipped up an aptly named “Planet of Sound” to close the set, the band members finally looked the roaring crowd in the eyes — with Francis even standing on the monitors – and waved. But an encore that began promisingly with Lovering adding a lead vocal on a well-placed “La La Love You,” plus a “Where is My Mind?” that had the room reverberating with the crowd’s adoption of the song’s “Woooo!” chant, things unraveled when the Pixies dove into “Vamos.” Santiago seemed frustrated that his feedback showpiece of tapping his thumb on his unhooked guitar plug didn’t carry anywhere near the sonic oomph of a sound system the size of Boston Calling. So after a half-hearted solo of waving his guitar through the air and rubbing its strings on his chest, Santiago packed it in early and the group sputtered to an unexpectedly anticlimactic finish. Not that it mattered on a triumphant night that was surely miles better than in the Pixies’ fledgling days at T.T’s.

The Central Square club promises a week-long farewell blowout to its 30 years of rock before closing on July 25, as owner Bonney Bouley couldn’t come to lease terms with new building owners at the Middle East. And while it’s doubtful that any other bands will come forward on the level of the Pixies (only a final-night appearance by Scruffy the Cat has been announced thus far), it’s looking like a sad but glorious home stretch. Tomorrow offers a flea market of T.T.’s memorabilia from 1 to 6 p.m. Not sure they’ll be anything quite as special as Thursday’s rapidly sold-out comemorative T-shirts with the Pixies’ logo over T.T.’s trademark bear paw.