Aviva Studios, Manchester
May 26nd 2026
On the second of two sold-out nights at Manchester’s Aviva Studios, Thomas Sidwell is on hand as the Pixies tear through four decades of catalogue in a room more accustomed to high art than high volume. The band, as ever, have other ideas.
Aviva Studios’ Hall is not, typically, a rock and roll venue. The vast space on the edge of town is more usually home to immersive theatre, large-scale installation art and high-concept performance, the type of place where you’re encouraged to contemplate.
Tonight, the Pixies are here to make sure nobody contemplates anything for too long with their brand of famously snappy, anti-fluff tunes. It is also absolutely sweltering. Manchester has delivered one of its rare heatwaves, and the crowd, a beautifully democratic mix of grey-haired devotees and twenty-somethings for whom the Pixies are already mythology, are making the best of it, warm lagers (possibly a few IPAS) in hand, vintage tees already wrought sweaty. There will likely be a few sore heads come Tuesday.
Opening the night are GANS, a Black Country electro-prog outfit (my best effort at categorisation, but honestly ???) who arrive armed with a flautist, a saxophonist, and a drummer who moves like a coiled slinky. In the baking May heat they tear through ‘Dirty Cowboy’ and ‘I Think I Like You’, genuinely catchy, genuinely strange, and unlike almost anything else around right now. One of the best new bands in the UK. Remember the name and get them on your playlists before they become massive.
Three of the original four are here: Black Francis, still commanding the room with minimum theatrical effort and maximum gravitational pull; Joey Santiago, whose lead guitar work remains one of rock’s great under-appreciated pleasures; and David Lovering behind the kit, relentless and precise. Original bassist Kim Deal, who departed in 2013, is represented tonight by Emma Richardson, formerly of Band of Skulls, who joined in 2024 and has made the role entirely her own.
From the opening salvo, the standout is Hangwire, from 1990’s Bossanova, Francis’ voice in remarkably fine form, the band impossibly tight for a group who appear to be enjoying themselves – and on Night Two, that enjoyment is increasingly visible. There are smiles. There is looseness. There is the pleasing sense of a band who have earned the right to take pleasure in diving into their back catalogue to see what they will find in dusty corners. Francis introduces King of the Prairie as one of what he calls their ‘grandchildren songs’, painting a picture of mariachi bands on Californian highways, eagle buses, a wave from the window. It’s a warm, generous moment of storytelling that softens the typically austere Francis persona. Jane (The Night the Zombies Came) follows, the band leaning into the nocturnal menace of their most recent material.
Then the set shifts into a higher gear. Bone Machine: stone cold classic, no further elaboration required, gives way to Debaser, which Francis dedicates to Chas Banks, the legendary tour manager who guided the band through their early European breakthrough and who, touchingly, is here in the crowd to hear it. The room erupts. If there was any remaining residual politeness in the crowd, it evaporates here. Debaser is one of those songs that breaks rules, bends others, and follows a few just enough to feel like a friend arriving at the door. On a first listen, it sounds like anarchy. On your hundredth, it feels like home.
A stripped-back, druggy slow-burn of Wave of Mutilation, genuinely bristling, serotonin-lowering in the best possible way, gives way to Motorway to Roswell, from 1991’s Trompe le Monde, and then Where Is My Mind?, which lands with the weight of a song that has outlived every context it was placed in and still sounds new.
The night ends with Into the White, atmospheric and seemingly boundless, the dry ice clouding the stage as the song stretches out into something approaching transcendence. Then they’re gone, an emotional farewell that hangs in the muggy air of the room long after the house lights come up. It might be the last time we get to see them (yeah, we’ve heard that before).
Forty years in, the Pixies still sound like nobody else. Whatever comes next for this band, Manchester got two nights of it. Lucky us.
~
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All words by Thomas Sidwell, his author profile ishere
Photos by Adam Edwards.You can find Adam at hiswebsite,InstagramandFacebook
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