Doolittle

I finally, finally, finally got to see the Pixies last night at the Hammerstein Ballroom. An absolute dream come true. I looooove them. They, as expected, sounded phenomenal. They were unbelievably tight, Kim Deal's voice was haunting, Frank Black can still scream like there's no tomorrow, the guitar riffs were fantabulous, and so on. In an alternate universe, they would have rocked the house but, chalk it up to over-excitement on my part, they seemed almost . . . bored? Soulless? There was zero audience engagement except for a few random sentences from Kim. And the feeling was reciprocated. There was next to no dancing or even movement on the floor. I was expecting rapture, madness, joy, anything. Nope. I've honestly seen more bodies swaying at a church service.

Throughout the show, the Pixies had a vibrant screen of riveting, surrealist film images running behind them and their faces were dimly lit. I seriously think I could have saved a whole heap of money by simply listening to them on my iPod and watching my screen saver. At one point they had cameras lighting the crowd and capturing the first few rows of people on the screen behind them. Overall, it was definitely a cool effect but I couldn't help but feel the irony of paying to hear a band and instead watching the friggin' audience.

Other stage effects included giant, glowing, bulbous orbs and epic amounts of white smoke pouring onto the stage. My friend Petey likened it to a Great White show, "Let's get the hell out of here."

The Pixies have so many great, great songs but the Doolittle set only lasted one hour. The audience had to beg for each encore when it felt wholly premature for them to have exited the stage to begin with. And they were gone so long -- as we watched a film of them repeatedly taking bows -- that we were joking that they were probably already back at their hotel while a roomful of idiots remained clapping. (That could actually be an interesting social experiment. How long would people keep clapping?) But the encores, including Gigantic and Where is My Mind?, were mind blowing and most definitely worth the wait.

They may still be one of the best bands ever but, hands down, Wilco blows them away.