Photo: WENN.com
Having finished their tour of the outer cosmos, the beloved Pixies return to Earth and deign to bring their slightly altered line up to the Hammersmith Apollo. They’re met by a delirious and suitably diverse crowd, consisting of teenagers who missed out the first (and second) time around, and lifelong fans alike.
They open with an appropriately career spanning trio of tender tunes; ‘In Heaven’ (a cover from their first demo tape), ‘Andro Queen’ (the lead track from this year’s excellent ‘EP1’) and the laid back ‘UK Surf’ version of ‘Wave of Mutilation’ – a mid career classic. From here, things get ferocious. “Hope everything is alright…” Frank Black drawls to signal the opening of ‘Mr Grieves’. The crowd assure him that it is, start jumping and don’t stop for two hours.
When you’ve got a vast and unimpeachable body of work behind you, writing a setlist can be hard. Whatever you leave out will be sorely missed. The Pixies minimise this issue by leaving zero space between songs. The moment a last chord is struck, the next count in begins. At this break neck pace they manage to tear through an incredible 35 tracks.
It’s a constant assault. Through a barrage of strobe they deliver ‘River Euphrates’, ‘Rock Music’ and ‘Tame’ consecutively (all of which feature Black’s insane animal screams) and you feel like you might have cauterised your own vocal chords just by listening.
Eventually, they return to their tender side. The quite bliss of 'Ana', one of the most beautiful surf rock tunes of all time, is astounding. Now the lights are up and you can hear the audience. It all feels less intense and more intimate. ‘La La Love You’ ends with the crowd clapping Lovering’s beat for him whilst he sits in the spotlight intoning the coda over and over in his comically sexy voice: “All I’m saying pretty baby…”
The sense of togetherness feels almost festive. Then ‘Where Is My Mind’ kicks in and the entire venue is unified, shaking the walls with ‘ohhhhwooohhhhs’ that sound like sonar cries from a pod of celestial dolphins.
Other highlights include Santiago’s captivating guitar solo during ‘Vamos’, in which he touches the fret board maybe once or twice in all of four minutes, instead getting the desired noises by flinging his instrument about and generally abusing it. Kim Shattuck is also great, both in her bass playing and vocals. In fairness, she sounds so much like her namesake that if you didn’t know she was a new addition, listening to her bouncing through ‘Debaser’ probably wouldn’t leave you any the wiser.
The new material sounds just as good live as the old. ‘Indie Cindy’ is particularly impressive and, just as you’re trying to decide if the spoken word bits owe more to Nick Cave or Mark E Smith in their intonation, the band launch into a crushing cover of The Fall’s ‘New Big Prinz’, utterly completing this alt rock wet dream of a gig.
One of the best band’s of all time are still very much on blistering form, and there are more EPs (and, you’d hope, more gigs) on the way. Very good news indeed.
Pixies played:
In Heaven (Lady in the Radiator Song)
Andro Queen
Wave of Mutilation (UK Surf)
Mr. Grieves
Break My Body
Cactus
Brick Is Red
Indie Cindy
Nimrod's Son
Crackity Jones
Something Against You
Tony's Theme
Hey
Bagboy
Big New Prinz (The Fall cover)
Distance Equals Rate Times Time
U-Mass
Gouge Away
What Goes Boom
Isla de Encanta
River Euphrates
Rock Music
Tame
I've Been Tired
Ed Is Dead
Ana
Here Comes Your Man
La La Love You
Where Is My Mind?
Vamos
Bone Machine
Monkey
Gone to Heaven
Debaser
Encore:
Caribou
Planet of Sound
Below: Photos of Pixies attacking the UK, 2013
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