Pixies
London The Roundhouse
A blitz of deathless alt.rock classics, plus a whole heap of Doggerel.
“While I prefer the original version of You Really Got Me, she will defer to the Van Halen version,” Black Francis bawls, introducing new-album track Dregs Of The Wine with the comedy excuse he and his first wife used to give for their divorce. It’s the most exposed and revealing Charles Thompson has got on stage in almost 20 years of Pixies’ secondphase shows, and highlights how Boston’s indie-rock pioneers are maturing into their rich legend.
Whereas previous tours were dominated byet al – and barely smattered with reunion material, tonight they slot almost all of their sublime eighth album into their impromptu two-hour set, Francis dictating the next song into an on stage microphone as they go. The effect is to add an enchanting, dark-forest depth to the mythological manias of their youth. Rabid collegepunk howls like and ghost-hunting ballroom ballad catchy confessions of an uploaded personality. There are deep-diving treats too in campfire apocalypse ditty The end of the set-list reviews the whole:
