Vinyl Diaries V: Pixies (Part II)

In Heaven, everything is fine.

If Pixies really have seen or indeed been to the other side, I can only imagine they saw themselves looking back.

I should be too old for this by now, but then so should they. And if they can enjoy it, well so can I. It was like being a teen all over again as the train crossed the Sydney Harbour Bridge, taking us to the Luna Park amusement park, a fairly fitting venue for the Pixies sideshow. Rock'n'roll freaks, they are definitely sideshow alley material.

The sparse stage was set up quite cosily, with the rapturous response to the band's arrival seeming to spark something special for them from the very start.

The delightful Kim Deal is never without a huge grin of course, but it seemed even wider as she opened the night with In Heaven. Not everyone seemed all that familiar with the track, but as soon as it was clear that not only would we be getting Wave of Mutilation but that it would be the sleepy wash of the UK Surf version, it began to sink in - after all this time, not only was this Pixies but it was as brilliantly tight and dreamy as we could have wished.

The tempo raced away as Bone Machine crunched into gear, while the bouncing bass of Here Comes Your Man sent us all aswoon - and abounce.

The songwriting craft at the heart of their music becomes even clearer when you can see how it is all brought together, seamlessly entwining almost contradictory elements to create a harmoniously complex beast, as shown next in This Monkey's Gone to Heaven.

Frank's scream may not be as bone-rattling and teeth dislodging as back in his prime, but it's still an amazing primal release of whatever those bizarre demons are he seems still to carry around, the disfigured monkey on his back that even now he just feels so unable to shake.

In the sleepy west of the woody east... It's edu-kational!

I've got the softest of soft spots for UMass, I must admit. A handful of years ago I actually spent a year studying at the very college where it all began, more than once thinking that it was the closest I was ever going to get to a Pixies moment. It pleased my little pop-heart no end to be taking the same film classes Frank Black had taken, watching films on the same screen that inspired Debaser. Well, they played it. I was smiling already, so I smiled a bit more.

The electric shock of their Jesus and Mary Chain cover Head On was a jittering jangle that slid nicely into the crooney Caribou, getting back to nature in a strangely Frank way.

From here, things got messy. Gloriously so. A ragged, dirty, heaviness kept in check by an almost hidden melodic imperative, the sleaze factor was notched up a little by the low-slung Subbacultcha and its black-clad characters 'looking like an erotic vulture'. Number 13 Baby was almost at the other end of the high-low spectrum, Mr Black pinching his voice into near falsetto.

But it's back to the scream as "hips like Cinderella" spin on in on the back of the darkly thumping bass of Tame. Joey and Frank played off and against each other deliciously towards the end, drawing some beautiful looping and colliding duelling guitar moments that brought shivers.

Did I mention sleaze? We hadn't seen real sleaze until Hey and its whore choir, sliding into a murky Gouge Away. The tempo was upped again and again as Mr Grieves and The Holiday Song passed in quick and chaotic succession and rolled on into the original take of Wave of Mutilation.

A short breather followed the last ringing outro, but there was still no respite yet. If anything the sound was filling out even further, richly quilted despite there was a restraint to the playing that didn't quite explain the density.

Planet of Sound was wickedly wild and led neatly into a cracking Debaser. Cracking remained the order of the evening as Crackity Jones whipped frenziedly into Something to Tell You, before the crazy Spanish adventures of Isla de Encanta and delightfully dodgy documentation of incestuous union that is Nimrod's Son.

The sheer weight of musical ideas was getting almost too much to take, with this latter part of the set reminding how intense these four can be. Another of the Spanish outings in Vamos followed and Joey took centre stage, working voodoo magic on his weeping guitar. With a drumstick to assist he conjured up devil after devil, sparking spirals of looping feedback into the air before shattering it all into a million pieces, only to pick it all back up again and blow us all clear away.

We were stranded way out in the water, which could only mean one thing - the musical wonder that is Where Is My Mind. As deliciously brilliant as the evening had been this was perhaps their first truly transcendental moment, opening doorways to somewhere well beyond the here and now and allowing us to float off through the widening cracks. On that note they left us to our astral travelling, savouring what had been.

But not for too long mind, as returning to the stage they handed the vocal duties over to drummer David Lovering, which could only mean one thing - La La Love You. A strange little number, it's kind of weird seeing them all adding their layered 'I love you' to the song, given the ongoing tension that even at their most musically together still seems to be simmering on a personal level.

While hoping against hope that it was going to be one of those nights that seems never to end, of course it had to. And while they hadn't played Velouria or Alec Eiffel yet, there was one missing tune that they simply had to close with.

So Kim returned to the microphone and kicked off with that most blissful of bass lines. "And this I know, his teeth as white as snow." A gas it was, indeed, to see Gigantic in all its poptastic glory.

It had happened - Pixies, (Pixies!) in full flight and, at least at this moment, loving every single moment of it. Even Frank couldn't help but crack a smile.