Hey, hey, it’s The Pixies. A little thicker around the waistline maybe, but otherwise perfectly preserved, beamed down as if from Planet 1988, ripping into ‘Bone Machine’, ‘Crackity Jones’ and ‘Broken Face’ like some breakneck Mexican cowpunk fetish metal combo.
And your reporter, like the other few thousand in the front pit, well, he’s having a moment. ‘Wave Of Mutilation’ and ‘Monkey’s Gone To Heaven’ reconfirm The Pixies as rock ’n’ roll’s great dimestore surrealists.
Before the CGI of Pro-Tools, they were dredging the septic tank of rock music’s subconscious using the most basic tools available. It was all done with wire and wood, mirrors and smoke. ‘Debaser’, their hymn to Bunuel’s Un Chien Andalou (occupying penultimate position in today’s set) wasn’t idle namedropping – they really were like the musical version of Cocteau’s trick photography. And today, listening to them juggernaut through ‘I Bleed’ with maximum efficiency, it’s clear that they’ve lost nothing. Their songs are still paved with unreliable surfaces: at any point the floor of a verse might give way, plunging you into an infernal chorus where Santiago’s guitar assails you with cattle prods and beaming Kim Deal la-las in your ear or keens like a strange sea-hag (‘Where Is My Mind?’).
‘Gigantic’, ‘No. 13 Baby’, ‘My Velouria’, ‘Mr Grieves’, ‘Here Comes Your Man’, ‘Gouge Away’ – these are not acid casualty meanderings (the closest 60s kin they can claim are Roky Erickson) – instead they plumb the strangeness of a domain far more savage and weird than any lysergic apparition, providing commentary on a triple x rated nature documentary where wasps plunge their ovipositors through the exoskeletons of caterpillars and impregnate them with parasitic larvae, where barnacles attach themselves to crustaceans and use them as living incubators for their spawn.
They leave us with a scalding ‘Tame’ and we all stand around waving bye-bye and grinning, nursing fantasies of a new album and indoors tour.
After that the Chili Peppers were a formality, albeit an entertaining one. If there’s a difference between tonight’s show and Slane last year, it’s that the Meath gig belonged to John Frusciante, but this was Chad’s turn. Loose as a goose, and possessing a ferocious wallop, Mr Smith looked like a man who’d located his spiritual groove and was in no mood to crawl out of it.
So, there’s no denying the Chilis their muso credentials, but of late they’ve also matured into fine songwriters (‘Californication’, with a baroque folk intro, ‘Scar Tissue’, ‘By The Way’ and ‘Don’t Forget Me’). And they don’t let the scale get to them, goofing off by contrasting LA soft rock – a cover of Looking Glass’s ‘Brandy (You’re A Fine Girl)’ – with Germs-like West Coast nic-fit punk and intros cribbed from Joy Division.
Still, the band have milked this particular territory dry. Right now they need to get off the road and hightail it home before their shows lose all element of surprise.