After the Pixies awesome performance at the [intlink id=”93″ type=”post”]2007 V Festival[/intlink], we were pretty excited about this show.

Tickets were purchased as soon as they went on sale and the anticipation grew.  Doolittle isn’t my favourite Pixies album, but it’s still pretty damned good.  It seems the ‘concept show’ of replaying old albums is quite the trend these days…. not necessarily a bad thing though.

This was the first time I’d been to Festival Hall in Melbourne, and I’d heard a few negative remarks about it.  It was indeed the odd shape that I’d heard about (a rectangle with the stage against one of the long walls), but I actually thought it was a great room.  The sound was excellent where we were (in the side stalls), and it reminded me a lot of the old Festival Hall in Brisbane.  A lovely old room with old chairs and an atmosphere that some of the newer rooms just can’t match (Brisbane’s Convention Centre and Sydney’s Hordern Pavilion spring to mind).

Anyway, onto the show…. I have no idea who the support act was as we missed them.  When the lights went down for The Pixies, the crowd (obviously) went nuts. Surprisingly (for me anyway), they didn’t open with Debaser, but played through four B-sides, which threw me a bit (and a lot of others too by the looks of it).  The hard core Pixies nuts at the front were still jumping around like a frog in a sock, but for me, I was a little “WTF, did I misread something?”

After the 4 b-sides, they swung into Debaser with much gusto and played Doolittle faithfully from beginning to end.  I will admit at this point, I was disappointed with the show.  The band seemed tired, and honestly, it really looked like they didn’t want to be there.  Maybe they were sick of Doolittle?  Or maybe I was?

After the obligatory short break, they came out and did the obligatory encore of their other hits that weren’t on Doolittle.  Where is My Mind and Gigantic brought the house down (as one would expect).

The show wasn’t bad at all, I was just a little disappointed.  Maybe they were so good at V Fest because they hadn’t toured in a while and now they were just over it? Who can tell.

The setlist:

1. Dancing The Manta Ray (Monkey Gone to Heaven B-side)
2. Weird At My School (Monkey Gone to Heaven B-side)
3. Bailey’s Walk (Here Comes Your Man B-side)
4. Manta Ray (Monkey Gone to Heaven B-side)
5. Debaser
6. Tame
7. Wave Of Mutilation
8. I Bleed
9. Here Comes Your Man
10. Dead
11. Monkey Gone To Heaven
12. Mr. Grieves
13. Crackity Jones
14. La La Love You
15. No. 13 Baby
16. There Goes My Gun
17. Hey
18. Silver
19. Gouge Away

Encore:
20. Wave Of Mutilation (UK Surf)
21. Into The White

Encore 2:
22. Planet Of Sound
23. Velouria
24. Caribou
25. Where Is My Mind?
26. Gigantic