Pixies
Fillmore Detroit
July 28, 2025
I’ve been a fan of the Pixies for as long as I can remember. I mean, since the days when you had to line-up outside of a record store to get tickets. Online ticketing was still pretty foreign and rare when the Pixies got back together in 2004, triggering an avalanche of nostalgia acts doing just the same and launching the model of touring behind the anniversary of a beloved album.
The Pixies helped start that trend and still press it forward today, booking two nights at Detroit’s Fillmore venue to perform a “classic Pixies set” with some of the new music sprinkled in as well as a night dedicated to two of their albums – “Bossanova” and “Trompe Le Monde,” their final album before breaking up around 1993.
The original bass player Kim Deal is no longer part of the band. (People still lament this – every time I brought up this show, mentioning Kim not being part of it was close behind). But that also feels like a slight to Emma Richardson, who fills in wonderfully.
And the Pixies -- in this current formation -- absolutely ripped the Fillmore apart. They’ve always had this reputation of being aggressive without being loud like a metal band would be. There’s a ferociousness in the songwriting, mainly fueled by their loud-quiet-loud dynamic. And seeing them so many times since they’ve broken up and reunited, I’ve noticed they have a knack for playing everything faster and ripping through sets like they still have something to prove after all these decades.
Point taken, Pixies. My ears are still ringing.
And here’s the thing about touring those anniversary albums: I totally get the appeal! But sometimes, the nostalgia drowns it all out. With these two albums, however, performed front-to-back, they are sonically very different.
So, when the band got into the cosmic surf rock of “Bossanova” opener “Cecilia Ann,” I was way more invested than I realized. For an album I’ve heard on CD countless times, hearing it live for the first time really helped me notice the trends and patterns within. I had never considered it a surf record in all of my life, but when it was blasting me in the face live at the Fillmore, it was completely unavoidable. And for a record that's so huge, it is somewhat comical for the Pixies to stay as stoic as they do on stage (major shout out to Frank Black's voice not losing anything from the album to the stage).
It only became more pronounced when they wrapped “Bossanova” and went straight into “Trompe Le Monde.” The Pixies left the surf sound behind (although a theme of aliens and outer space do run through both records), and went for massive guitars, with stand-outs like “Planet of Sound” and “U-Mass” bringing the crowd together in headbanging sing-alongs.
And no, you won’t find any breaks or breathers for encores here. Just a straight blitz through 33 songs (including mega hits like “Where Is My Mind?” at the end).
I’ll give the band credit. Decades later, they’ve still got it. And they’re still standing above the same trends they helped trigger years ago.
