Pixies (with Spoon) at Moody Amphitheater September 5, 2025

 

About a month ago, SimonUK told me he had a loose ticket for The Pixies at Austin's Moody Amphitheater.  I said "why, yes, I'll go."  And, indeed, I did. 

September 5, 2025, I found myself in Section 105, Row J, Seat 14.

I was surprised to learn that Spoon was supporting.  

is that dude behind me laughing at me?  I'll assume he's laughing at Simon.

I like Spoon, but am not a Spoon-head.  That's Steanso's role in the family.  But this was at least the third time I've seen them and 2 of those were not planned, and the first was me going to humor the aforementioned Steanso.

Spoon played the radio hits, and had folks grooving in the way that I recall audiences grooved in the 90's, complete with a lone blonde kind of staring too hard at the front man in the front row.

Between sets, I ran into high school pal Mari J.S. and her husband, Pastor Todd (the coolest pastor West of the Mississippi).  

Pixies came on and played new stuff I didn't know, but liked.  I probably haven't bought any Pixies in the 21st Century, so I've missed a lot of their catalog.  The back half of the show was familiar stuff from earlier days, some of which I don't think I'd heard since high school.

Kim is no longer with the band, but new bassist Emma Richardson absolutely kicks ass and can sing.

the famed SimonUK

The weather was weird but fine.  It was hot AF in Austin, but a wind kept coming in and it kept things really pleasant through the whole show.

Pixies were one of my fave bands for four albums in the 90's.  Surfer Rosa, Doolittle, Bossanova and Trompe Le Monde.  They broke up following the 1991 release of Trompe Le Monde, and I'd missed their show in Houston for that record, and was already put out, and really grumpy about it after I thought there would never be any Pixies again.  

However, they reformed sometime after 2006, and I saw them with Steanso at the now defunct Austin Music Hall.  

Really, they haven't changed much over the years, even with a new bassist/ vocalist.  And that is not a complaint.

The audience was multigenerational - folks my age who were around for those first four albums, folks who found them later who were a tad younger, and then the children of those two groups - many in high school.  But I walked to the show briefly alongside a 40ish lady and her two middle-school aged kids.

You don't see The Pixies to see an energetic dance show (this was no Kylie Minogue concert).  They play the same sort of show they did in black box clubs in the 1980's, I'd guess.  But, holy shit, is the drumming by David Lovering unreal, and Joey Santiago is as creative and singular as ever on guitar.  Black Francis/ Frank Black remains Black Francis - just up there tearing it up while remaining largely motionless.  And, as I mentioned, Richardson is a great fit for the Pixies.

The setlist is here.  It was kind of perfectly timed to start before nine and land exactly at 10:30.  No encore nonsense.  They just wrapped it up with Where is My Mind? followed by and rendition of Into the White.  

Here's most of the pics I took.