It had just begun to drizzle, some of the first Ardwick had seen for a couple of unusually sunny weeks, outside over Manchester’s O2 Apollo. Inside though, under the looming golden gild of the Apollo’s lofty ceilings, a sold-out crowd stays dry, and waits for Pixies.
“We’re contractually obliged to warm you up”, Big Special drummer Callum Moloney informs us between songs, as vocalist Joe Hicklin takes a sip from a plastic pint glass – they fulfilled the terms of this agreement, hopefully they got paid. Big Special (or “Big Spesh” to the initiated), are a Black Country duo hailing from Birmingham – equal parts The Streets-John Cooper-Clarke- and Royal Blood, their drum-driven, pounding diatribes, and Hicklin’s Ian Curtis-esque jolting intensity brought the crowd into sharp focus. Humorous yet powerful, screeching yet sonorous – ones to watch (though not on this tour, this was their final night supporting Pixies).
Hicklin’s spit had barely dried from the stage as Black Francis (‘Charles’ to his friends) strode on stage with what appeared to be a mug of tea in his hand, followed shortly by bassist Emma Richardson (with the band since 2024, the third bassist the group has claimed since the departure of founding member Kim Deal in 2013). Cheers greeted them as they emerged into the darkness of an unlit stage, rising as the lights flicked on and the opening chords of ‘Monkey Gone to Heaven’ swim out from stacks of distorted amps.
The group are older than they were, but they still retain that same sense of cool which has endeared them to alternative audience for almost four decades. There was little need for talking between songs, they have a lot to get through, and the only real break was to dedicate crowd-pleaser, ‘Here Comes Your Man’ to their old tour manager Chaz Banks who recently had his “last Saturday night”. It went down well.
It was a mixed crowd, with a few generations of Pixies fans seeming to have together, from what I can only presume were first wave there-when-it-happened fans (along with many of their kids), to the younger, student-y crowd. For those who lost out in the lottery of birth and weren’t lucky enough to see Pixies in the late eighties, however, the sonic experience cannot have been much different. Sure, there’s less hair to look at and a different bassist, but Francis’ vocal abilities are still shockingly good. Francis tears through his screamier numbers like a much younger man, sounding more like a distorted guitar than a singing voice on tracks like ‘Tame’ and ‘Debaser’, and then proceeding to hit soft choral notes on softer numbers such as ‘Where is my mind?’. It’s remarkable that his vocal cords have remained untorn, considering they’ve been put through such pressure as a regular occurrence since 1986 – that tea he’s drinking must be doing its job.
The crowd really got going as we headed early into, ‘Wave of Mutilation’, with the first plastic pint cup taking leave from its post in some middle-aged man’s hand, sailing beneath the ornate, vaulted ceilings of the Apollo, and jettisoning its contents (the contents being, at 7-quid odd a pint, the equivalent of liquid gold) over the increasingly bouncing crowd – it would not be the last.
Fans of Fontaines DC may be interested to learn that the one cover of the evening was of ‘In Heaven’, from David Lynch’s Eraserhead. The Pixies’ version was darker, murkier than the Irishmen’s, with Emma Richardson briefly taking over vocals and the guitars taking on muddier tones; the cover would’ve been right at home on Surfer Rosa.
After an opening salvo of fan favourites, the middle third of the set consisted solely of tracks from their newest album offering, The Night the Zombies Came. For a few in attendance, this section of the evening was essentially a live listening party; the words “here’s one of our new ones” coming from an aging group are often dreaded and greeted by muttered groans in the audience, but it is testament to the enduring appeal and musical ability of Pixies that these new offerings were accepted just as readily as any other song of theirs (though admittedly with fewer words known by the fans). A couple of standouts were ‘Chicken’, and ‘The Vegas Suite’, replete with horror movie references and undertones of scripture.
Having got the new tracks out of their system, the final part of the performance was packed with pre-21st Century cult classics, ending, you guessed it, on Surfer Rosa’s ‘Where is my mind?’, with Black Francis switching up the delivery of his lines Alex Turner-style, so nobody could quite sing along – everybody tried, anyway.
Upstairs at the after-show, following the performance, Francis was introduced to a couple of kids who told him of their aspirations to perform music. “I’ll see you out on the road” he told them – after nearly 40 years on the road himself, and with Pixies still sounding this good, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s still at it when they’re all grown up.
