Boston’s iconic alt-rockers light up the Bowl
Castlefield Bowl’s long-running string of open-air shows have become a staple of the Mancunian summer time.
Bringing a little bit of a festival vibe to a concrete-clad, city-centre space provides an airy experience that’s impossible to capture in any of Manchester’s arenas, larger venues or dive bars. It’s special – and when the pandemic brought all live music to an abrupt halt throughout 2020 and early 2021, these shows – billed as Sounds of the City – were some of the most sorely missed of the lot. So when they were finally able to return audiences were ready and raring to go – and judging by the crowd at this week’s Pixies show, they couldn’t have come soon enough.
Forming in Boston in the late 80s, Pixies are one of those bands with so much history and so many tracks under their belt, that each show has the potential to be a different beast entirely. However the band’s storied and much written-about audio output simply makes for a grab-bag set list that the quartet, led by long-time frontman Black Francis, can delve into in order to retrieve hits that delight.
Speaking of which, tonight’s crowd looks decidedly older than what a typical Sounds of the City show might attract. Bunched together between the railway arches of Deansgate and the city’s iconic Science and Industry Museum – and flanked by Manchester’s own historic Roman ruins – a sea of largely grey hair and bald heads leads directly to the stage where the band are belting it out. Although that’s not to say Pixies are speaking to just one demographic tonight – in fact, upon closer inspection the audience they’ve gathered is a mixture of ages – all of whom are eager to see what the band have planned.
Opening with “Cactus”, from iconic 1988 debut Surfer Rosa, Black, guitarist Joey Santiago, drummer David Lovering and bassist Paz Lenchantin get fans’ pulses racing with a bouncy rendition of “Here Comes Your Man” up-front. Fluctuating between deeper cuts and the more recognised grunge-pop hits that have made the band a staple of the genre quickly comes to define tonight’s setlist – one that’s given a feeling of efficiency thanks to Black’s signature on-stage silence in between tracks and lack of crowd interaction.
A cover of Neil Young’s “Winterlong” punctuates airings of “Monkey Gone To Heaven”, “Bone Machine” and “Debaser”. Meanwhile, perennial hit and perhaps the band’s biggest track, “Where Is My Mind?” leads the entire Bowl in a chorus of haunting ‘Ooohs’ as a stalled Northern Rail train looks on from up high on the railway bridge above and audiences begin to pour out into the Manchester night as the stage lights fade.
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