PIXIES | LIVE REVIEW
Motorpoint Arena Cardiff, Wed 7 Dec
It feels appropriate that the Pixies stage set consists of a few spotlights above a row of empty metal shelves, like a supermarket after the desperate masses have swarmed in and ransacked every crumb. Their set is, in its own way, perhaps the most austere I’ve ever seen: two hours, 38 songs and not a single word exchanged with the audience. There’s a case for this, in terms of crowdpleasing efficiency – inter-song banter might have shrunk the setlist down to, oh, 35 or so – but it’s a strange, slightly jarring experience at an otherwise boisterous arena rock concert.
The Boston group’s reformation in 2004, while received with gratitude by fans too young to see them in their 80s/90s first flush, was widely seen as one of the more cynical rock regroupings of recent decades: personal frostiness tolerated in the knowledge that this was each member’s best shot at a big salary. To their credit, they’ve since recorded two new albums, like actual functioning bands do; 2014’s Indie Cindy and this year’s Head Carrier both get a decent showing tonight, Bel Esprit arriving right after an opening salvo of Bone Machine and Monkey Gone To Heaven. For better or worse, standout numbers from Pixies’ millennial catalogue – Snakes, Talent, Um Chagga Lagga – tend towards the one-dimensional, if catchy.
Otherwise, a 2016 Pixies live set bears little close analysis, being a workmanlike canter through all of their most popular songs (excepting Gigantic, co-written and sung by now-absent bass player Kim Deal) and some slightly less obvious album tracks like Dead, Subbaculcha and Crackity Jones. Caribou is a choice showcase for the gnarlier side of frontman Black Francis’ vocals, likewise Joey Santiago’s guitar. David Lovering’s drums are mixed louder than anything else in the room, a common aural experience in this venue, although the levels right themselves in due course; Deal’s replacement, Paz Lenchantin, comes closest to looking like she’s actually having fun.
Indeed, and despite mild lyrical and musical adlibbing on Here Comes Your Man and Debaser, it’s only the penultimate Vamos – an excellent, frantic mess of monotonous percussion, slide guitar and Spanish lyrics – where the quartet actually cut loose. It ends with a smoke bomb and a dutiful bow, before a single-song encore of Into The White and a fuss-free exit.
In that the Pixies always had a certain emotional distance about them, preferring surreal microfictions over songs about politics or relationships, it’s probably unrealistic to expect an arena gig to feel like an embrace from a long-lost friend. Just hearing some old favourites booming around the building after a few Danish lagers was clearly enough for many, and there’s no shame in that game. Cosy acceptability sits oddly with a band once written about as the wildest sound in indie rock, but perhaps it comes to us all in the end.
words NOEL GARDNER photos ERNESTO ROGATA