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This is the Planet of Sound: Pixies Concert Review

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This is the Planet of Sound: Pixies Concert Review


Alternative Rock Pioneers the Pixies bring down the house in Spokane.

Names like Black Francis and Joey Santiago and other figures of noise pop are always going to be well known within a subgenre audience whose fashion tends to lean toward ironic ’80s T-shirts and grungy torn jeans. But in the greater northwest of the U.S. in Spokane, Washington, a different story was told at the Pixies’ INB Performing Arts Center concert, where an audience composed of fedoras and sweater-vests were trapped between cramped seats.

A noisy collage opened the show before a steady bass-snare beat dropped, followed quickly by a surfer rock-reminiscent guitar strum and a jubilant bass-line that descended into a full dynamic shift of percussive, hard-riffing tango. The Pixies blasted out onto the stage with a “Wave of Mutilation.”

Their performance addressed the audience with immediacy; this was going to be an engaging performance. The lighting of the show was immaculate, but the audio mix was sometimes rough. But just seeing the side profile of drummer David Lovering projected onto the wall like a mythical figure made up for a lack of complete sound clarity.

Meanwhile, Paz Lenchantin, the bassist, was able to perfectly emulate the bubbling personality and infectious melody of Kim Deal while bringing in her own moody demeanor as a stage presence in a short-cut pointed black leather jacket. However, most of her playing was buried in the mix for this particular performance.

Black Francis, the front man and rhythm guitarist, fantastically sprang old life from his slightly aged vocal chords by thrashing them to death for the audience’s pleasure with old screamers and vocal strains like “Broken Face,” “Crackity Jones” and “The Sad Punk,” while still being able to hit precise notes with clarity and tonal accuracy. There were a couple off moments in the night for Francis though: when “Where is My Mind?” closed the night off, he lazily slurred the chorus to a different count than the album version, throwing off all of the audience members singing along. This might have been one of the many reported “F— you” moments of Francis, but when he monotonously forced out the lyrics to “U-Mass” like he was being drilled by a military sergeant and was about to break, there was no denying that it was a strain to his health.

The highlight performer was Joey Santiago this time around, with some shining moments of sound clarity for his sonic ventures: the surf pickings of “Velouria” and “Is She Weird?” pierced the auditorium with just as much clarity and conviction as the hard riffing of “Bagboy.” Sometimes, particularly in songs from their 1991 album ‘Trompe Le Monde,’ the guitar got shuffled away in the audio setup.

But nothing prepared the audience for the performance of “Vamos.” When the song broke down into the repetitive, nervous drumming that indicated the guitar solo section, Santiago strummed some notes and played around with his whammy bar and pedal board for about the full solo length and had fans nervously eyeing each other. Is he going to go all the way?! Just do it, Joey! There was a moment of expectation when the guitar solo was likely supposed to end that Santiago made eye contact with Lovering for feedback, and the audience howled out a couple of encouragements. Next thing Santiago was requesting a drumstick, bouncing it off the ground, slapping his guitar around, and even playing feedback frenzy behind his back. Then something amazing happened; Santiago went to bounce his drumstick, but missed catching it. He tried to kick it and missed as well. He looked down at it in question before unsaddling his guitar and forcing it down onto the ground, shaking it frantically on top of the drumstick to the audience’s wowed surprise—spitting audible fire over an audience gleefully awaiting it.

Following this bout of showmanship, David Lovering snapped his snare to indicate the spitfire transition into Francis’ screams, but either his voice was too thrashed to snarl psychotically at the jeering audience before him, or he was displeased by the flash of the prior moments, but the expectancy of the audience was denied in favor of skipping the screaming and singing the next verse. Following this huge climax to the show, the band gave a denouement: “Where Is My Mind?” before bowing for the audience while they all clapped and howled. They obviously wanted more, but Francis seemed tired. They really discussed on-stage and tested just how long the audience was willing to push. After a good stretch of wondering whether they were ever going to do anything, Pixies gave an encore in the form of “Planet of Sound.”

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T.J. Gossard is The Sentinel student newspaper's Features assistant editor, and is also the president of NIC Film Club and NIC's Phi Theta Kappa Delta Kappa Chapter. Gossard intends to become a film director and is currently practicing skills of communication and multitasking by taking on club duties and pursuing an A.A. in Communications at North Idaho College.

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