Tonight’s gig is billed as “a very special show”, in a small venue. Then it adds another fact that some might consider a caveat: “giving fans a taste of their new album.” Uh-oh. There may be people who prefer the music that the legendary US alt-rock band, Pixies, have made since their reformation to the music that made them legendary in the first place, but you never actually meet one.
A gig featuring three-quarters of their latest album, Beneath the Eyrie, should theoretically be for diehards only. But you clearly don’t get through a reunion that’s lasted 16 years, weathered the departure of bassist Kim Deal and then her replacement leaving, and new albums that received the worst reviews of the band’s career, without a certain pragmatism. So while the setlist is apparently being decided on the hoof by frontman Black Francis, it’s both hugely expansive – 34 songs, including B-sides and a cover of Neil Young’s Winterlong – and structured so that you’re never more than a couple of minutes away from something off Doolittle or Surfer Rosa. No 13 Baby, Bone Machine, River Euphrates, songs that are 30 years old but haven’t dated at all, and that Pixies, to their immense credit, still play with thrilling rawness and vitality.
The stuff from Beneath the Eyrie, meanwhile, grapples with the issue all the band’s recent material has faced – how should a mature version of Pixies sound? Variously trying on country rock, gauzy guitar textures (Daniel Boone) and even Brecht and Weil oompah (This Is My Fate) for size. Death Horizon is a fantastic song in classic Pixies mode. Who knows, maybe one day the audience will go as nuts for it as they do for the closing Vamos, tonight enlivened by Joey Santiago playing his guitar with his cap.
