The Pixies @ Festival Hall 20/11/25
I was just a bit too young to catch the Pixies first incarnation back in the 90s, hitting my teens the year after their initial break up and only discovering them, as I imagine many people did, years later through the soundtrack to cinematic cult classic Fight Club in 1999. But even then, The Pixies were never really at the forefront of my musical tastes, always seeming to exist at the edge of my experiences instead.
So, it was with a strange kind of nervous anticipation that I headed into Melbourne’s Festival Hall to see their classic set on Thursday night. The fear of seeing a band for the first time nearly 35 years after their hey day is palpable, you just really have no idea what to expect. Can a group whose core trio are all now in their 60s deliver a performance that lives up to the expectations built up over the course of decades?
Thankfully, the answer is a resounding yes! The Pixies stormed through a monster set from (almost) the full breadth of their back catalog with an energy and ferocity you often struggle find in bands less than half their age.
Even without Bossanova / Trompe Le Monde (both albums were played in full the previous evening), the expansive setlist was packed with absolutely iconic bangers – Bone Machine, Hey, Monkey Gone To Heaven, Debaser, Where Is My Mind and on an on. This is a band whose impact on musical culture has been so pervasive that even if you don’t realise it beforehand, you inevitably end up recognising a large chunk of their back catalog. New album The Night The Zombies Came features prominently (The Vegas Suite being a highlight), as does Doolittle (we got a whole 10 songs from this early classic album), with surprising deep cuts from their 1987 mini LP Come On Pilgrim. A smattering of covers and B-sides round out the list. This was a classic set in every sense of the word.
The night kicked off with their guitar driven cover of In Heaven (Lady In The Radiator Song) from David Lynch’s seminal surrealist horror Eraserhead, with Emma Richardson’s vocals commanding attention and pulling the crowd into the Pixies world, setting the tone and atmosphere for the night to come.
With barely a pause between songs (and no time for applause) the band blast through first 4 tracks with flawless technique and a sky high energy they somehow manage to maintain throughout the whole 95 minute set, helped in no part by early classic Here Comes Your Man that got the crowd hyped up early and never let them go.
The performance is frantic and furious in places, playful and inventive in others. An early highlight sees lead guitarist Joey Santiago unplugging the guitar cable for a pulsing electronic beat, manipulating tones with the rapid flipping of the pickup selector switch and using the edge of his baseball cap to scrape across the strings for a beautifully screeching vibrating dissonance. Often chaotic (but in a controlled way) and with minimal (but just enough) crowd interaction, the Pixies put on an unforgettable show filled with the extreme dynamics and tension between restraint and explosive energy that has defined them for decades and influenced much of the alternative rock that came after them.
They feel like a band that knows they have nothing left to prove, but effortlessly prove it anyway. The original trio are on immaculate form and totally in sync. Santiago’s guitar playing is exquisite and just as weird and eccentric as its always been while David Lovering’s drums bring a thumping power to every track. Black Francis’s voice might have become a little deeper, a little richer and coated with a layer of gravel as the years have passed but it is no less iconic, and the idiosyncratic cadence and delivery of lyrics is as present and exciting as it ever was. Rounding out the band, new bass player Emma Richardson slots into the group effortlessly, her backing vocals haunting many tracks and she even takes on lead singer duties on both the opening and closing songs in the set.
After a frantic rendition of Where Is My Mind and longtime favourite Debaser, the house lights come up and the drum beat of the final song Into The White begins. Richardson’s voice now carries us towards the end of the night, the haunting repetition of the song’s title feels like the controlled comedown out of a crazy, vivid fever dream, an echo of Dorothy’s incantation that there’s no place like home, returning us gently to the real world and our lives beyond the music.
Written by Lee Crawford.