PIXIES - O2 City Hall, Newcastle 06.08.2022

As I left the City Hall beaming ear to ear one thought brought me down to earth “How the **** am I going to review that??“ Such was the epic set I had just seen The Pixies deliver.

From The Surftones 'Cecilia Ann' to Neil Youngs' Winterlong' two hours later, the band were firing on all six, song after song, no bulls**t banter, they knew the crowd were having a good time, there was no need to ask every ten minutes!

Black Francis, Joey , David & Paz just gel together so well they can change the set every night (check the set list site) and having such a strong back catalogue they’ll always have big hitters and crowd pleasers no matter what they choose! Third song in we get the first of the eleven from 'Doolittle' that we will be treated to in 'Wave of Mutilation' and already the crowd are bouncing both in the main hall and the balcony something I’ve not seen in a while and it was a joy to see!

'Crackity Jones' and 'Isla de Encanta' are as frantic as you hope leading into the solid groove of 'U Mass' and one of the first of many goosebump moments of 'Monkey Gone To Heaven' where the crowd just absolutely sang their hearts out having waited two years a venue change and a date change they weren’t holding back tonight!

We are also given a preview of the forthcoming album 'Doggerel' with four in a row from it all sounding class! My particular favourite of those was 'There’s A Moon On' which has a rockin Neil Young vibe to it.

'Gigantic', 'Debaser', 'Caribou', 'Gouge Away', 'River Euphrates', Velouria' are all present and correct each one received like a long lost friend. Also fantastic to hear the likes of 'Tame' and 'Motorway To Roswell' too. As I said at the start I had no idea how I was gonna tackle this one as they gave us 39 ….. THIRTY NINE songs to soak up and take in and I think if it hadn’t been for the curfew they’d have played more!!

We even got the UK Surf version of 'Wave of Mutilation' towards the end slipped in between 'Planet of Sound' and 'Where Is My Mind'. And with a wave and a bow they were done but a sold out City Hall was truly entertained and satisfied. Anyone saying “oh they didn’t play …. “ needs to give themselves a shake, I’ve not seen a band put that much into a set of that length for a LONG time! Here’s to the next time and hopefully sooner rather than later.

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Photos - G's Gig Shots