Pixies tour Canada 2011! Exclamation exclamation one exclmatation one!!1!1

Yes, we’re excited. Full details and dates below…

The Pixies will bring their critically-acclaimed “Doolittle Tour” to 13 Canadian cities this Spring.  Kicking off at the Metro Center in Halifax  on 9 April before heading west, ending in Vancouver on May 3.  This will be the Pixies’ most extensive tour of the provinces, and will see the band visiting several Canadian cities for the very first time.  In addition, the tour will make stops in three U.S. cities.

Starting today, Friday, 21 January at 9:00AM EST, a limited number of tickets for the tour dates will be available through a special pre-sale at www.pixiesmusic.com.  In addition, all pre-sale purchases will include a “download taster” of live tracks from the “Doolittle” show.  The public on-sale will kick off next Friday, 28 January.

Dates for the Pixies’ 2011 “Doolittle Tour” are as follows:

APRIL
9    Metro Centre, Halifax, NS
10    Centre – Casino Moncton, Moncton, NB
12    Salle Albert-Rousseau, Quebec City, QC
13    Metropolis, Montreal, QC
16    Civic Centre, Ottawa, ON
17    The Center in the Square, Kitchener, ON
18    Massey Hall, Toronto, ON
20    Wentworth Room, Hamilton, ON
22    Fox Theatre, Detroit, MI
23    Eagles Ballroom, Milwaukee, WI
24    Roy Wilkins Auditorium, St. Paul, MN
27    Centennial Concert Hall, Winnipeg, MB
29    TCU Place, Saskatoon, SK
30    Southern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium, Calgary, AB

MAY
1    Shaw Conference Center, Edmonton, AB
3    Orpheum Theatre, Vancouver, BD

© Brian Banks, Editor, Music Vice

The Pixies are bringing the Doolittle Tour back to the US. The 11-city trek kicks off on September 7 at the Tower Theatre in Philadelphia and will extend the 20th anniversary celebration of the release of the band’s classic 1989 album, Doolittle. Tour support will be provided by Fuck Buttons, the electronic pop duo from Bristol, England.

All of the shows will be recorded and the CDs will be made available immediately after every show at the band’s merch table; all live CDs can also be ordered at www.doolittlelive.com.

A special pre-sale begins on Monday, 7 June at 9AM EST, via the Pixies new website www.pixiesmusic.com – the band’s first official website. Pre-sale tickets provide access to the best seats at each show, and each purchase comes with a complete live recording of the show, delivered via email the day after the show. There is a clear incentive for fans to take advantage of this pre-sale as the cost of the presale tickets and live recordings is less than the all-in price for tickets at public outlets.

Confirmed dates for the Pixies’ 2010 U.S. Doolittle Tour are as follows:

SEPTEMBER
7    Tower Theatre, Philadelphia, PA*
10    Ryman Auditorium, Nashville, TN*
13    Fox Theatre, Atlanta, GA*
17    Uptown Theatre, Kansas City, MO
18    Brady Theatre, Tulsa, OK**
19    Verizon Theatre, Dallas, TX*
20    Verizon Wireless Theatre, Houston, TX
22    Austin Music Hall, Austin, TX***
24    Mesa Amphitheatre, Mesa, AZ (tix sold through the venue)
25    The Joint, Las Vegas, NV*
26    RIMAC Arena, San Diego, CA*

Gig/Concert: Pixies at the SECC, Glasgow with Sons and Daughters
Venue: SECC, Glasgow, UK
Date: 4 October 2009
Headliners: Pixies
In one word: Faux-art

The gig kicks off and heads south with the distinctive-enough pop goth stylings of Glasgow’s Sons and Daughters. I suppose I should stress: the songs are great; slinky, crafted, Phrygian things. Hell, in places it’s almost rock music.

In particular, the opener, ‘Gilt Complex’ is a tasty Cramps-meets-Siouxsie blast.

But they’re so apologetic for being onstage – so hesitant, perhaps, to be getting in the way of the Pixies – that they don’t convince us, and fail to exploit the sexy potency they have on record.

This, coupled to singer Adele Bethel’s breathless, bland-nothings banter, means that all they get out of the crowd is a sense of polite observation and patient foot-tapping.

A couple of nice tribute songs – one to the infamous Glasgow lech Bible John, one for Johnny Cash – arouse some passion by the end, and they slink gratefully off, duty discharged.

A beat. An eerie ambient backing track begins to play. “Un chien Andalou” by Luis Buñuel rolls on the big screen. And, one by silhouetted one, the Pixies take the stage, motionlessly watching the film, as no doubt we are meant to.

It takes about fifty seconds of this for what I suppose is Glasgow’s natural aversion to pretension to kick in, with a big mon directly behind me bellowing, “What is this, Depeche Mode? Get the fuckin Pixies oan!”

Well, aye. If you’re looking for someone to blame for art-rock, officer, I’d inform on these guys in an instant. The tape continues for five or six minutes, mostly to fidgeting and light-hearted heckles. Sure, it’s obtuse, but is it art?

Maybe. The pretence to art. A dance around art. That’s maybe all the Pixies ever really were. The namedrops, the airs and the mystery of it all, which is all that most art-rock ever accomplishes.

But you can forgive them all that – the conceit, the pondering, even that Minotaur boxset monstrosity – when they’re this tight, this fractious and ingenious, this much the morbid Latino art-punks sporting a set of Dali’s eyes. No one in rock has matched their resolved dischords – see “Dead” for a glorious, cresting example – or the masking of potent melody inside barbs.

I’ll confess here that I went to the gig imagining decay, signs of cash-in or of strain. And, while Frank Black looks disturbingly like a shaven John Goodman, his voice remains as demented, as high – higher in the most part than Kim Deal’s lines go – as ever. Screeching into his middle age.

Bassist Kim Deal carries the banter – none of the others speak a word to us – doling out B-side info and presenting a deep-set permanent grin.

They get b-sides out of the way before stalking their way through 1989’s Doolittle, in order, in full. It’s an eclectic thing, and they’re unafraid to actually play the songs rather than repeat them by rote, so ‘Mr Grieves’ takes on a touch of morbid ska and the parody “La La Love You” more of a leer than is canon.

The first encore is the other two period b-sides, one a wonderful, understated version of the album track “Wave of Mutilation” and the other the incandescent space-punk of “Into The White”.

It’s not thirty seconds before they return. Hopping out for another encore, and as delighted as she’s been all night, Kim Deal tells us: “We played here in ’91 but the stage buckled. Tell your mom and dad we finished the set, yeah?”

A breakneck selection from Surfer Rosa and Come on Pilgrim follows, displaying their earlier, fiercer, Spanish legacy. It’s an intense parade; seven songs hurtled through in 15mins, before Kim flips a coin to choose… and announces with a wink the last, courtesy number, “Where Is My Mind?” to general euphoria.

A group bow closes the faux-theatre they’ve laboured on. It is a beery kind of intelligentsia that stumble gleefully to the exits.

© Gavin Leech

Setlist
Dancing The Manta Ray [b-side]
Weird At My School [b-side]
Bailey’s Walk [b-side]
Manta Ray [b-side]
Debaser
Tame
Wave Of Mutilation
I Bleed
Here Comes Your Man
Dead
Monkey Gone To Heaven
Mr Grieves
Crackity Jones
La La Love You
No. 13 Baby
There Goes My Gun
Hey
Silver
Gouge Away
1st Encore
Wave Of Mutilation [Awesome Lounge Version]
Into The White
2nd Encore
The Holiday Song
Nimrod’s Son
Caribou
Broken Face
Something Against You
Vamos
Isla De Encanta
Where Is My Mind?

Related Links:
Music Vice Review and Photos of Virgin Festival Ontario, Toronto 2009 featuring the Pixies
Music Vice Review and Photos of Virgin Festival Toronto, 2008 featuring Sons And Daughters
The Pixies – MySpace
Sons And Daughters – MySpace

Virgin Festival 2009 Toronto, Ontario at the Molson Amphitheatre
Festival review and photos – words by Liz Keith, photos by editor Brian Banks – September 5, 2009

With a lineup that seems as though it were randomly pulled out of a hat, “eclectic” barely begins to cover it – scattershot seems more apropos. General attendance for the bands were greatly off balance, with the massive crowds coming and going as though to the pull of Nine Inch Nails’ and The Pixies’ orbit, and yet if you only showed up for those two evening shows, you might miss out on a few hidden gems. But that’s how it is at these things…

Gig/Concert: Sunday at V-Fest Ontario, Toronto, 2009
Venue: Molson Ampitheatre, Toronto, Canada
Date: August 30, 2009
Headliners:  Pixies
In one word: Pneumatic

SATURDAY, AUGUST 29 (for a review and photos of Sunday at V Fest, click here)

Mates of State open the weekend to a sedate turnout that barely covers the main pit area, with a few folks lounging around on the lawn. Raucous upbeat near-minimalist pop consisting of drums and keys, they start the fest off fairly quietly, but not disagreeably so – kind of like having tea first thing in the morning when you’re used to jet black coffee. They finish off their set with an agreeable cover of Tom Waits’ Long Way Home.

An hour later waiting for the next band, my ass is bouncing around on some cherry-red inflatable cushion that’s just begging to be stolen – really, it’s got “I was stolen from the Virgin Music Festival” written on the side. I’ll do my best to oblige, you pneumatic little ass pillow, you! Unless someone else beats me to it…

Lights comes on after MoS, a time-warped 80’s-tinged pop sound sung by someone who hardly looks old enough to have been around for it the first time… but no matter. She has the right kind of spacey quality to her voice to pull off the sound, and although I’d say she’s perfectly marketable to the Hannah Montana set, this does not send me fleeing in the opposite direction(!). Brian tries to convince me that she’s on the cusp of The Big Time. I think it’s the beer talking. Still, I have yet to get any sort of groove on. Moving on…

I am distracted from the beginning of Grizzly Bear’s set by the overwhelming urge to tackle the guy dressed up as Waldo (or Wally, as the stripy geezer is known in the UK). I have seen guys in similar getups at other non-Virgin sponsored events, so at first I figure it’s just some random dude who has figured out the next best thing to taking your puppy for a walk in order to make yourself a chick magnet… but no, he’s actually just a V-Fest employee. Or something. Between him and the kids dressed up as trees – who bob around the venue in groups of two or three, possibly to dissuade any anti-mascot rage – we’re doing fairly well raiding the costume department.

Moody, at times channeling diverse sources from The Smiths to Yo La Tengo, Grizzly Bear play straight-up indie-rock that pretty much kind of flits all over the place, style-wise. Some songs are very spacey, very moody without falling down a well… good summer afternoon in the grass music, with drifting melodies. But – as I discover through the rest of the weekend – sometimes having such a broad range of artists works against the flow of a music festival, making the arrangements of the different sets seem more fractured than complimentary…

And while we’re visiting the complaints department, I have to say that the amphitheatre, as choice of venue, while I realize it was last minute…really… REALLY… NOT IDEAL. While it may be fine for an evening event, stadium seating is not conducive to day- or weekend-long events; you’re faced with the choice of spending all day with your ass going numb in those hard plastic seats, or squinting down from the lawn (although it still offers a good view); and beyond that you lose some of the intimacy, the communal vibe that open-air festivals are all about. I like wandering around freely from stage to stage, which I discover is another missing point when I try to head over to see Thunderheist at the Virgin Radio stage, and find out that I can’t bring my overpriced beer past the gates, as I have to travel – briefly – through the CNE grounds. I chug what I can – it was freshly opened, and I’m not 16 anymore – and then give up and just stash the rest in my purse. Thank god this thing’s bottomless…

Anyhoo.

Finally the sonic caffeine I’ve been waiting for hits me as I finally make it to the other stage… damn! Where were they two hours ago?! I keep hearing of this band, and keep missing them, but not today. Thunderheist is MC Isis and Grahm Zilla, from Toronto and Montreal respectively; collectively they are thumping beats and heavy pop-techno sliced with sassy lyrics that gives your ass no excuse not to get shaking… Onstage they deliver the wake-up call the crowd needs, with Isis diving back and forth from the stage to the crowd, taking advantage of the photo-pit guard’s gallantry to help her get back on stage. Goddam it is one hot set, from the tease of Isis’s workshirt dress and equally cheeky lyrics to Zilla’s smooth sometimes-retro beats (I caught a streak of the Eurythmic’s Sweet Dreams slipped into suenos 2k8). I missed half the set so for me it’s over too soon; hoping to score one of their CDs I find out later that there was a mad rush for the merch tent at the end of their set, and all were snapped up. No matter. I’ll be sure to catch them later.

After Thunderheist, I am 20 minutes late to catch longtime CanCon pop icons Sloan. Longtime favorites from my musical heyday – the golden time known as the early nineties – Sloan came out of the Canadian – specifically Haligonian – indie pop scene, survived the now-they’ve-made-it-we-hate-them backlash, and now… where *is* everybody? I haven’t kept up on their last album.. but.. the music of my youth…. damn. But still I catch a few old favorites, mostly from the Twice Removed EP, arguably one of the most solid indie pop albums around. With lead singer Chris Murphy still recovering from a hit-and-run accident nearly a month previous, I’m impressed they’re even here… they pull off a good set, nevertheless.

Up next, Paolo Nutini… kinda like a bluesy Rod Stewart with a bit more soul and backed up by The Little Big Band… Not bad. Clearly the contingent of flag-waving Scottish expats are loving it, going nuts for the bluesy – big band kinda rock. He’s got a great voice, all husky croon and personal lyricism but the sound isn’t really my thing, although their closing cover of The Coaster’s Down in Mexico is balls-out good.

The crowds are finally filling out to some sort of decent capacity… ish… could it be that Franz Ferdinand’s set is near? Fuck yeah. Kicking it out with Dark of the Matinee off their first album, and tossing in a few tracks from their latest offering Tonight, they inject some much needed energy into the day and seem to feed a symbiotic exchange with the crowd, like a hyperactive child that suddenly goes apeshit in the middle of what would otherwise have been a fairly sedate day, causing everyone else to do the same. (I love it when that happens.) With a few exceptions, actually, the day was kind of exactly like that… FF play quite a few earlier hits, kick stomp through the raucous Take Me Out and thunder to a close with what ends up starting a trend for the weekend: the tumultuous all-band dogpile on the drum kit – with lead singer Alex Kapranos telling the crowd “Sometimes it’s alright… to just go fucking mental.” Cheers.

“Sometimes it’s alright… to just go fucking mental!“

The tide is in, bringing with it the rest of the crowd, in varying vintages of Pixies t-shirts and stories of I-saw-them-whens. What to say? It’s the effing Pixies. Frank Black is all cranky frontman, Kim Deal is super-sweet, constantly thanking the crowd; the tunes are classics and are performed spot-on. There is no rust on this machine, and no deviation from the high expectations set up for them. It kinda of feels like a best-of touring show, but still, I can’t complain. It’s the fucking Pixies.

Battling the receding tide of concertgoers after The Pixies finish up, we catch up with The Rural Alberta Advantage, only one member of which is actually from Alberta… who, like me, fled east to the great smokestack in the sunrise (although I headed a little further east for some decent bagels). Most of their songs have some sort of reference to the province, however, and they do my fair homeland justice. They are, however, crushed into Virgin Fest’s version of intimacy, the Boardwalk Stage – is the name a reference to its size? – which is a small vendor’s tent in the middle of…. other vendor’s tents. Twenty feet behind me is the beer stall, where annoyed alcoholics vie with annoyed hipsters for space (imagine *my* sense of conflict). The small space is packed, and unless you’re three feet from the tent, you can’t see any faces to put to the fast-paced organ-fringed thumpy indie-rock. It’s a shame. I predict RAA will rise above this indignity, to stake a claim to larger stages, mine more hearts and minds, and then inadvertently drown a bunch of ducks in a toxic tailings pond. No, wait. But they do have a lot of passion to back up their promise, and now I will have my own I-saw-them-when to tell about RAA, of this I am sure.

You know those awkward moments, when you feel like you should apologize, but you really just want to run? After The Pixies’ set, half the stadium promptly emptied, no excuses made; just a lot of seats, emptied, as the stage was set up for the next act. I am not overly familiar with Ben Harper, in any incarnation, but damn….ouch. I stick around while the remaining loyalists crush in tighter for Harper’s set, but I make it through half an hour before calling it quits. I’m just not getting into it, and I need my rest for day two…

© Liz Keith

Brian’s view: For me day one at Virgin Festival was all about one band: The Pixies. Undoubtedly they were the band that people had came to see on Saturday, as was evident when followed by Ben Harper a.k.a. Captain Buzz Kill, who caused a mass exodus. Having Harper as the Saturday headliner was a VERY strange call that nobody I spoke with during the weekend could seem to fathom, but no matter: The Pixies were brilliant and I’ll never forget standing just a few metres away in the photo pit as I was walloped by a wall of ear-piercing combined guitar fuzz from Joey and Frank’s line of Marshall stacks. It was an eerily beautiful concert moment when they played “the Fight Club song” Where Is My Mind with everyone immersed in the sound and the moment, as guys and girls up in the standing areas and on the lawns danced their crazy dances. Brilliant.

I enjoyed a lot of other music before the Pixies, with thumbs up for Thunderheist, The Rural Alberta Advantage and Grizzly Bear, as well as a couple of swaggering displays from my compatriots Paulo Nutini and Franz Ferdinand. But yeah, the Pixies! Wow…pinch me. – Brian, Editor.

Photos from Saturday of Virgin Festival Toronto 2009

(click thumbnails to enlarge)