The Pixies are currently on a tour of Europe and the U.K and thankfully they came to Manchester last night with support from London band The Big Moon. This young, up and coming, all female band formed 5 years ago and I would describe their music style as happy grunge and very fitting as support to The Pixies. They began their set with 2016 track Silent Movie Susie and after more songs from the past 3 years like Sucker and Cupid they ended with the very catchy new single Your Light.
By the time The Pixies arrived on stage the whole building was packed tight. They jump started the gig right from the beginning, getting straight into their massive hit Debaser and the crowd went wild. I’m guessing frontman, Black Francis, either isn’t much of a talker or they just wanted to play as many songs as they could in 2 hours because it was just back to back music from start to finish, no chit chat. Amongst the nearly 40 track setlist I’m fairly sure they played almost everything from their fantastic newly released album, Beneath The Eyrie. It’s hard to put a genre on this album, St Nazaire has a raucous punk sound, This Is My Fate is more of a rock shanty, Bird Of Prey and Death Horizon are quirky with bassist Paz adding to the vocals on both,
Catfish Kate, In The Arms Of Mrs. Mark Of Cain and On Graveyard Hill are pure indie and my favourite Silver Bullet is mostly dark and slow but when Davids drumming kicks in it gives it another dimension and sounded awesome live.
The old favourites Monkey Gone To Heaven, Here Comes Your Man and Where Is My Mind? are all totally different sounding tracks too and the crowd were in full voice for these last night. In between all the past hits and the new album were songs which I didn’t know as well but they still sounded great, Black Francis’ voice has not altered in over 30 years and Joey Santiago played some really special guitar solos which were well received by the fans. This was the first time I had seen The Pixies live and I thoroughly enjoyed them, the venue is one of the best in town too. Check out their new album, I definitely recommend a listen.
