Saturday 10/07/04 Stereophonics, Pixies, Goldfrapp @ Move Festival, Manchester

This is the day. The day of days.  The day that I finally get to see The Pixies.  The other acts on the bill are immaterial, but I’ll write a bit about them anyway.

The transformation of Alison Goldfrapp from wispy-indie-waif to electro-goddess is remarkable.  Its only a couple of years ago she was wailing – albeit beautifully – away to vast soundscapes like ‘Human’ (which is given an early airing today) from her debut ‘Felt Mountain’.  Now though, she grips Manchester’s Old Trafford Cricket Ground between her thighs of thunder, like an S&M Mistress gone a bit OTT.  The tunes grind, bump and purr in all the right places, the only complaint being that with tunes like ‘Strict Machine’, she’s a bit too perfect… and not as good as the Pixies.

Who are …magnificent.  How do you put a unique angle on a Pixies review, when all the superlatives known to man have already been used up on them during this, their reunion tour?

You don’t.  You simply agree with them.  They’re mindbendingly fantastic.  In a world currently so obsessed with style and image being an integral part of music, here are four very ordinary-looking people, hardly moving onstage, barely speaking to the audience, but making the greatest noise you’re ever likely to hear.  How can you pick a highlight? The opening ‘Bone Machine’? ‘Tame’? ‘Debaser’? ‘Gigantic’? ‘Here Comes Your Man’? A final, achingly beautiful ‘Where is My Mind’? The truth is, they’d all be the highlights of anyone else’s sets.

The yowl of Black Francis is primeval, Kim Deal’s voice could cut glass, Joey Santiago is one of the greatest guitarists ever, and David Lovering sports a worryingly redneck-type ‘do.  But who cares? Together – and only together – they are the Pixies! And they’re on that stage, right there, not 200 yards in front of me, playing Pixies songs!!!

**** me, what could possibly follow that?

Not the Stereophonics, that’s for sure. But y’know what? They give it a go.  Spurred on by the fact that they’re the most undeserving headliners in the history of music, they burn through ‘Vegas Two Times’, ‘Thousand Trees’ and ‘Bartender and the Thief’ like the mad rabid Welshmen they aren’t.  But then, then… they stop.  And trudge along in the style of the good old Stereophonics we all ****ing detest.

They’re not as good as the Pixies.  In fact, they’re not as good as me, plummeting down the side of a mountain in a tin bath, plucking away at a banjo with me teeth.

…and that’s saying something.

Photos by Dave Kent