When I discovered The Pixies it was like coming across a long lost grimoire. Often nonsensical, dark or twisted lyrics yelped and screeched at me over music that shouldn’t be pleasing to the ear, but somehow was… to the right people. “This is the band Kurt Cobain listened to…”, “This is the band Radiohead wish they were…” – younger teenage me was in decent company, apparently.
The best way I can describe The Pixies to someone who has never heard them before is this… they simply have never given a fuck about what people think and in doing that, they invented modern rock music. Credited by many for popularising the quiet verse, loud chorus song structure, and the now cliché girl bassist line up. That girl was Kim Deal, and she’s worthy of her own long article here… but she won’t be joining us tonight after leaving the band in 2013 – but you’d still go to see The Beatles play even if Lennon wasn’t there, right?
The first time I saw The Pixies, they played the same song three times in one set – a different version every time – and screwed up the intro to one of their biggest hits in front of a festival crowd before laughing it off. I’m excited to see if the performance has stayed so ballsy after all these years and more importantly if the new material from the new albums sits in a set with the classics just as comfortably.
The one and only support for tonight is The Pale White. A three piece from Newcastle, they clearly share some of the same guitar pedals as The Pixies as there’s plenty of atmospheric note play at work. That leaves the bass to do a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to the backbone of the music and they don’t fail at that. The bass is huge and a lot more classically rock n roll than The Pixies. The drummer is very decent, but seems to make concerted efforts to hide behind the kit. I don’t know if he’s just tiny but he’s certainly not stage shy as his head is never not banging away. If you’re into dirty, long haired rockers, then you’ll probably be into these guys… this crowd looked upon them very favourably.
The Pixies walk onto the stage and there’s a bit of toying around with Black Francis’ guitar as he hacks away at it before launching into ‘Gouge Away’. From the first notes we’re off at break neck speeds through the set. You forget how punk rock The Pixies are until you’re suffering from whiplash as they’ve blasted through five songs in the length of time that it would take any other band to perform three. Even with the seemingly rushed counts into each song, the band are remarkably tight.
Black Francis’ voice is as good as it was back when I saw them as a youngling, and even further back when he had hair. If you’ve only experienced the records, you’ll be amazed at how much confidence is in the lead vocals live – a distinct lack of the perhaps endearing awkwardness of the early days. Joey Santiago stands in front of a row of guitar amps and a pedal board that would make most shoegazers envious. Stoic but clearly enjoying himself as he pours effect-laden lead work over the crowd. David Lovering is criminally underrated on a kit and is working like a steam engine at the back of the stage. It’s new face Emma Richardson, formally of Band Of Skulls, who really holds her own on a stage of legends who have played together since 1986. The bass is nicely aggressive when it has to be but also waits its turn when required. As for her vocal contribution, it fits in well but we wisely don’t get ‘Gigantic’ in the set.
We only really get three newer songs in the set and as there’s next to no chat between songs, they hide in amongst the classics well – but it’s the classics that this crowd are here for. Just shy of a thirty song set (no encore – just tearing through it from start to finish), we get ‘Debaser’, ‘Here Comes Your Man’, ‘Velouria’, ‘Monkey Gone To Heaven’, ‘Is She Weird’, and inevitably ‘Where is my Mind?’ which is the big penultimate number before a cover of Neil Young’s ‘Winterlong’.
By the end of it all you feel almost exhausted at the pace but exhilarated at the hit count achieved with it. There’s absolutely nothing you can complain about once it’s done as they’ve managed to squeeze more into a show than any other band attempts – especially newer bands that seem to think a ten song headlining set is sufficient. There’s a million things the young bands of today could learn from The Pixies and tonight was a lesson in how to prove you’re still a force to be reckoned with.
Photos by Catching Light Photography