Live Report: Pixies deliver a short, sharp and sensational set at the RDS

“Dublin, you’ve been amazing. Thanks so much for coming. We love you,” is what Frank Black didn’t say from the stage. While Chris Martin was getting his céad mile fáilte on across the Liffey in Croker, the Pixies frontman was his usual, desultory snarling self, with nary a word to the crowd between songs. But we didn’t expect soft and fluffy; we came for the snarl. And what a snarl it is.

Bursting from the traps with the glorious, foul-mouthed cacophony of ‘U-Mass’, two things were immediately apparent. Firstly, the sound in this old cowshed of a hall has improved greatly over the years, although the olfactory tang in the bar area gave more than a hint of its recent equine occupants during the Dublin Horse Show recently. Secondly, the original band members may be getting on a bit (Black and guitarist Joey Santiago are fast approaching 60, while drummer David Lovering turns 63 in December), but age hasn’t dimmed their ferocity.

Pixies at RDS Dublin. Copyright Jason Doherty.

Blasting through approximately 27 songs in an hour and a half, the pace is breakneck, as they cherry-pick from their eight studio albums (the ninth, The Night The Zombies Came, is due out on October 25), and the indie-punk anthems keep coming. ‘Bone Machine’, ‘Caribou’ and ‘Hey’ form an early triple-whammy. The mid-set ‘Debaser’ is even more deranged than its studio version, sending the audience into raptures, particularly when it’s followed with ‘Monkey Gone To Heaven’.

The Pixies at RDS Dublin. Copyright Jason Doherty.

When the indie classics are coming thick and fast, the band barely getting time to catch their breath, it could be easy to forget how good these musicians are. Lovering’s incredible drumming is what keeps the whole show on the rails, a frenetic blur of arms that must be an incredible nightly workout.

Santiago is the epitome of unassuming cool, knocking out killer riffs with the minimum of fuss. At one point, he unplugs his guitar and ‘solos’ with the feedback from his finger on the lead, before then using his baseball cap to fuzz up the fretboard.

Pixies at RDS Dublin. Copyright Jason Doherty.

Bassist Emma Richardson, who only joined this year, the latest in a series of female four-stringers since Kim Deal upper sticks permanently in 2013, isn’t remotely overawed. The former Bank of Skulls member strides confidently around the stage, breaking into a massive grin late on as the crowd gave it their best falsetto for the ‘woo-woo’s in ‘Where Is My Mind?’ – she recently confessed to Guitar World that joining the band is a real ‘pinch yourself’ moment.

For the most part, though, eyes are on the frontman. Black may look like the middle-manager in a local DIY store, but he remains as arresting as ever, from the raucous cowpunk of ‘Nimrod’s Son’ to the magnificent and monumental ‘Gouge Away’, and his voice has rarely sounded better as he delivers a set that’s blissfully weighted towards their back catalogue.