Pixies take London by storm revisiting ‘Doolittle’
Pixies brought the O2 Brixton Academy down during their first of four nights in London with their ‘Doolittle’ tour. The influential band celebrated the 20th anniversary of its release by playing their timeless second album in full, plus its singles’ b-sides, to a rapturous audience comprising two generations of fans that sang-along to every single song. A lively Kim Deal introduced some of the tracks, most of them backed by excellent audiovisual works.
Label mates The Big Pink opened the gig claiming to be as excited as the rest of the audience by playing next to such legends.
The set began with four B-sides including “Dancing The Manta Ray” and ‘Bailey’s Walk’, followed by a rendition of the fifteen songs of the album in running order – from the incendiary “Debaser” to the ending “Gouge Away”. The four-piece performed two encores; the first one with two more B-sides, beginning with the slower UK surf version of ‘Wave Of Mutilation’; The second comprised three all-time favourites: ‘U-Mass’ from ‘Trompe Le Monde” sandwiched in between ‘Surfer Rosa’s highlights ‘Bone Machine’ and ‘Gigantic’.
Five years from their 1994 reunion tour –Pixies disbanded in 1993 and went to pursue solo projects with different fortunes- it was no less than surprising to see how well Black Francis; Kim Deal; Joey Santiago and David Lovering can revive the band’s mind-blowing energy and how relevant its music still is. Someone who saw the band during the original tour promoting the album – twenty years ago – couldn’t help feeling like a Grandad, falling into cliché territory by wondering why “No one make records as good as ‘Doolittle’ anymore”.
The tour will certainly reignite the appetite for the band’s flawless back catalogue, soon to be compiled and given an exclusive deluxe treatment on a lavish box-set named ‘Minotaur’. Details of which can be found in the video below.
