Pixies live at the Roundhouse

The Pixies played their final show of the European stretch of their Doggerel support tour on the 21st of March, coinciding with the 35th anniversary of their iconic album Surfer Rosa. The lineup consisted of Frank Black (guitar, vocals), Joey Santiago (lead guitar), David Lovering (drums), and the only non original member Paz Lenchantin (bass, vocals).

Playing a mammoth set of 38 songs, Pixies successfully showed that after being around for 37 years, with a few hiatuses, they're still capable of bringing the same novel spirit of Surfer Rosa and Doolittle to stage. The energetic bursts of Isla De Encanta and Tame were executed flawlessly, with Frank Black still screaming his head off when needed.

Naturally, being the support tour of their most recent album, Doggerel, the band played many of the songs from it. In fact, they played all but one song from the album. One thing to note about the Pixies is that their reunion work never managed to quite capture the essence found in their early work, with large portions of Doggerel becoming uninspired average rock tunes. The issue with their setlist is how they incorporated the new songs, playing many of them back to back instead of interspersed amongst the classics. This just took down a lot of the energy built up with the first few songs, which was reflected by the audience response; the buzz that was going around at the beginning died down to a small simmer. Once Frank Black changed his acoustic to an electric, playing Caribou brought back the band everybody wanted to see, with the setlist being practically perfect all the way to the end.

The most surprising part of the band was the guitarist. While Joey Santiago would often add a lot to the band, he never stuck out to me as an especially good guitarist. His live performance, however, was an entirely different beast. He showed himself to be one of the few kind of guitarists who, with only a few notes, can completely take hold of your attention, making a bad song good and a good song brilliant.

For those like me, who really like Pixies' old stuff but not their new stuff, I would recommend seeing them anyway. While their studio work may be at a low point, the fact remains that they are a legendary band, and like any legendary band who have performed for 30+ years, they still know how to put on an enjoyable show.

Here is a spotify link to their setlist