I’m Only Visiting This Shore

Pixies @ Kings Theater 5/28/2015
In Heaven / Andro Queen / Ed Is Dead / Nimrod’s Son / Indie Cindy / Wave of Mutilation (UK Surf) / Here Comes Your Man / Bagboy / Crackity Jones / Isla de Encanta / Gouge Away / U-Mass / Tame / Snakes / Caribou / Magdalena 318 / Subbacultcha / Brick Is Red / Hey / Silver Snail / No. 13 Baby / The Holiday Song / Greens and Blues / Cactus / La La Love You / Where Is My Mind? / Vamos // Wave of Mutilation / Debaser

I decided to go to this show at the last minute, almost literally. I had an interest in seeing this show for a while, but I was reticent about it because the ticket prices were kinda high. I looked the show up on Stubhub an hour before it began and discovered that people were slashing their prices quite dramatically, and scored a pretty good ticket that was $80 including the original service charges for just $20! The venue is about a half hour from where I live in Brooklyn, and I got there just before they got on stage. Very solid spur of the moment decision.

Pixies “Greens and Blues”

I know a lot of people hate that Kim Deal is no longer in the band and that the Pixies have a new album, but those things don’t really change the fact that the Pixies are excellent live and that Black Francis is one of the best rock singers of all time. Look at that setlist – even if you can’t stand the new songs, there’s still 22 Pixies classics in there. I think the new songs are OK for the most part – certainly not on the level of the original run, but above average for late period Black Francis material. I truly love “Greens and Blues,” though, and think it’s one of the best songs he’s ever written. I was vaguely nervous they wouldn’t play it, and pretty emotional when they did. (I wrote more about that song and the conundrum of the Pixies over here.)

As for the Kim thing: You can’t replace her as a presence on stage, and it’s not the same without her. But Paz Lenchantin does a fine job of playing her bass lines and singing her parts, and she’s close enough to replicating everything that you don’t really think too much about it during the set, and some people might not totally realize it’s not Kim. (The girls next to me actually asked me if that was Kim up there near the end of the show; they were genuinely unsure about it.)

Buy it from Amazon.