At Sydney’s Hordern Pavilion, the crowd hums with anticipation long before the lights dim. The Pixies — the band that rewired rock’s DNA — are back in Australia, this time on their own terms. After touring the country last year alongside Pearl Jam (and delivering a scorching headline show at Liberty Hall that Backseat Mafia covered), the Boston quartet returns with a renewed sense of purpose.
The Pixies saunter on stage with Black Francis dressed all in black (not surprisingly) and sipping from a mug filled with a hot drink. The current tour is special because there are two shows in each city — the first night has the Pixies playing the albums Bossanova (1990) and Trompe Le Monde (1991) in full and the second night is more conventional featuring tracks from their back catalogue as well as from the album they released last year,The Night The Zombies Came.
Black Francis is wearing dark sunglasses because, as he jokes, “a bird shat in my eye today.” The band rips through the first four songs of Bossanova; he quips about the songs being short, but to make up for that, there are plenty of them. Highlights from Bossanova include a scorching version of Down to the Well, while in Blown Away, Santiago’s guitar prowess is on full display as his riffs cut like a scythe. And just like that, Bossanova ends and it’s time for Trompe Le Monde, which Black Francis tells us was recorded a year later in the Valley “when the sun had almost set on the age of college rock.” The shift in gear is immediate as the title track of the album sees the band in a much rockier mode. Planet of Sound is a scorcher, with the crowd yelling its appreciation.
The Pixies’ story is etched into the fabric of alternative rock. Formed in 1986 by Black Francis (vocals, rhythm guitar), Joey Santiago (lead guitar), David Lovering (drums), and originally Kim Deal (bass, vocals), the band now features Emma Richardson (who is an accomplished artist) on bass and harmonies. Across five genre-defining albums between 1988 and 1993 — from Surfer Rosa to Doolittle and Bossanova — they reshaped how loud and quiet could coexist, fusing the sharp edges of punk with the eerie sway of surf rock.
That famous “loud-quiet-loud” dynamic became their signature — a structure that would go on to influence an entire generation of musicians. Kurt Cobain famously admitted that Smells Like Teen Spirit was his attempt to write “a Pixies song,” while Radiohead, PJ Harvey, and The Strokes have all cited them as foundational. Even now, their reach can be heard in everything from indie to metal to pop — wherever tension and release drive the sound.
Tonight’s show at the Hordern feels like both a victory lap and a reminder of why the Pixies remain singular. Black Francis’s voice still howls and cracks with cathartic fury, while Santiago’s guitar lines snake through the noise, unpredictable but deliberate. Lovering’s drums sound massive in the room — raw, direct, almost violent in their precision — and Richardson’s bass carries the songs with an assured calm.
There’s no flash, no small talk, just a steady unravelling of songs that sound as vital now as they did three decades ago. The Pixies’ magic lies in their contradictions: cerebral yet primal, melodic yet abrasive, detached yet deeply emotional. They make chaos sound mathematical. They make precision feel wild. And they make a lucky Sydney crowd remember that alternative rock as we know it would not exist without them.
Pixies will play one more show in Sydney and then the tour moves to Melbourne and Brisbane. Tickets HERE.
Images Deb Pelser
