The Pixies – Brixton Academy

As seems to be the trend these days, the basis for this my first ever Pixies show was playing their brilliant 1989 album ‘Doolittle’ in its entirety, in order.

As I noted when I saw Teenage Fanclub perform their ‘Bandwagonesque’ album a few years ago – it’s a concept that sounds fantastic in principle, but on the night can be very anti-climactic.

Quite smartly, The Pixies clearly tried to toy with this notion, but still stayed true to the ‘Doolittle’ focus of the night, by book-ending the album with a performance of some b-sides from the same period. Thus the show got off to a slightly wonky start with the likes of “Dancing The Manta Ray”, “Weird At My School” and “Manta Ray” (all included on the original ‘Monkey Gone To Heaven” 12” in 1989) together with the strange (even by The Pixies standards) “Bailey’s Walk” (from the ‘Here Comes Your Man’ 12”.

Then came the main-course – ‘Doolittle’ in order and uninterrupted. It’s fortunate this album contains some of The Pixies best-known songs; kicking off with “Debaser” that had the upstairs of the Brixton Academy shaking along with the rumbling bass-line.

Knowing the precise songs that will be played in exactly what order , also gave the band an opportunity to beef up the onstage production – so we were treated to a fantastically crisp large video screen behind the band playing videos and animations that often synced exactly to the lyrics being sung (especially well done with “Hey”). The videos themselves were extremely impressive, and the imagery and style was very consistent with the original Vaghan Oliver ‘Doolittle’ artwork .

The main set concluded, as with the album, with “Gouge Away”; before the band returned for the first encore, again staying true to the ‘Doolittle’ focus by performing the remainder of the ‘Here Comes Your Man’ b-sides, my preferred version of “Wave Of Mutilation” the slow “UK Surf” mix; and “Into The White”.

After a lengthy wait (presumably to give the ‘Doolittle’ focus time to fade) the band returned for a quick second encore, whipping out a few Pixies hits with “Vamos”, “Gigantic” and my all-time favourite Pixies song “Where Is My Mind?”

Full set-list:
01 Dancing The Manta Ray
02 Weird at My School
03 Baily’s Walk
04 Manta Ray
05 Debaser
06 Tame
07 Wave of Mutilation
08 I Bleed
09 Here Comes Your Man
10 Dead
11 Monkey Gone to Heaven
12 Mr. Grieves
13 Crackity Jones
14 La La Love You
15 No. 13 Baby
16 There Goes My Gun
17 Hey
18 Silver
19 Gouge Away

encore 1
20 Wave of Mutilation (UK Surf)
21 Into The White

encore 2
22 Vamos
23 Gigantic
24 Where Is My Mind?