Project Description
. . Pixies, Fortitude Music Hall, Brisbane, Australia. Photo: Alec Smart, 17 Nov 2025 . . Pixies, Fortitude Music Hall, Brisbane, Australia. Photo: Alec Smart, 17 Nov 2025 . . Pixies, Fortitude Music Hall, Brisbane, Australia. Photo: Alec Smart, 17 Nov 2025 . . Pixies, Fortitude Music Hall, Brisbane, Australia. Photo: Alec Smart, 17 Nov 2025 . . Pixies, Fortitude Music Hall, Brisbane, Australia. Photo: Alec Smart, 17 Nov 2025 . . Pixies, Fortitude Music Hall, Brisbane, Australia. Photo: Alec Smart, 17 Nov 2025 . . Pixies, Fortitude Music Hall, Brisbane, Australia. Photo: Alec Smart, 17 Nov 2025 . . Pixies, Fortitude Music Hall, Brisbane, Australia. Photo: Alec Smart, 17 Nov 2025 . . Pixies, Fortitude Music Hall, Brisbane, Australia. Photo: Alec Smart, 17 Nov 2025 . . CLICK THE PIC TO VIEW THE NEWS
.PIXIES
+ Elliot & Vincent
@ Fortitude Valley, Brisbane,
17th November 2025
(Live Review)Review and photos by Alec Smart (@alecsmart_fotos)
The Pixies performed at the Fortitude Music Hall in Brisbane on 17 November 2025, supported by New Zealand duo Elliot & Vincent.
The concert took place during The Pixies’ nationwide tour of Australasia, during which they played dual concerts over two nights in major cities. The first night focused on songs from their iconic fourth and fifth studio albums, Bossanova (1990) and Trompe Le Monde (1991); the second night consisted of highlights from the band’s 40-year career, plus tracks from their latest album, The Night the Zombies Came (2024).
Elliot & Vincent are an Auckland-based two-piece band, featuring (female) drummer and vocalist Elliot Finn and guitarist Vincent Cherry.
According to Music NZ: “equipped with a Japanese lawsuit guitar and a tom-heavy drum style, the pair fill the space in each other’s sound to form driving rhythms with distorted strain.”
The two were also primary supports for Scottish shoe-gazing, post-punk veterans Jesus & The Mary Chain’s 2024 Auckland concert at the Powerstation.
They favour a primitive, rhythm-heavy style spiced with Elliot alternating her vocals through both a standard and a distorted microphone whilst Vincent dabbles with guitar special effects. The Brisbane audience loved them.
And if anyone recognises the surname – yes, Elliot Finn is related to those other famous Finns of New Zealand: Neil and Tim of Crowded House and Split Enz fame. Elliot is the daughter of Tim Finn and the niece of Neil Finn. Elliot has also performed with her dad several times (this reviewer photographed her as a 10-year-old accompanying her famous father at the 2014 WOMAD music festival in Taranaki, New Zealand, playing ukelele).
The Pixies, formed in 1986 by two University of Massachusetts Amherst students who had adjacent rooms, hail from Boston, USA. The band was founded by principal songwriter Charles Michael Kittridge Thompson IV, who goes by the nom-de-guerre Black Francis (often Frank Black) and Fillipino-American guitarist Joey Santiago. They remain the core creative force after a few line-up changes and a hiatus between 1993-2004.
For many years (1986-93, 2004-13) the band featured bassist-vocalist Kim Deal, who went on to form The Breeders with her twin sister Kelley Deal.
Black Francis is a prolific songwriter, having released 10 studio albums with The Pixies, 15 solo studio albums, plus a duo with Reid Paley and two studio albums with his former wife, Violet Clark, under the name Grand Duchy.
He’s known for his surreal lyrics exploring themes of science fiction (especially extra-terrestrials), historic incidents (including disasters), malevolent Biblical characters (he grew up in a Pentecostal Christian family), and bizarre human behaviour.
The band’s untypical music employs varying changes of tempo punctuated by catchy, often suddenly loud choruses, played on jangly or distorted guitars, accompanied by distinct bass grooves that frequently halt. This soft/abrasive/soft style that they pioneered early in their career had a profound influence on ‘Indie’ and ‘Grunge’ music in the 1990s, especially in Britain, where The Pixies were significantly more popular than at home in the USA.
At the majestic Fortitude Music Hall, the band walked onto the stage accompanied by the song Young and Beautiful Bandit by the German industrial duo arbeit.
After Francis toasted the crowd, newly recruited bassist Emma Richardson (from Band of Skulls) began singing their haunting version of In Heaven (Lady in the Radiator song), which fans of David Lynch movies are familiar as a surreal song from the horror-noir film Eraserhead (1977).
The film’s disturbing scene features a sleep-addled man who awakens and hallucinates a miniature woman behind his radiator who resembles actress Marilyn Monroe, albeit with huge facial tumours on her cheeks.
In a bizarre and unsettling parody of Monroe singing Happy Birthday Mr President to John F Kennedy in 1962, the radiator lady sings In Heaven, Everything is Fine then squashes sperm-like creatures that are flung onto the stage beneath her shoe.
Sadly, the surreal and highly influential filmmaker David Lynch, probably best known for Twin Peaks, Blue Velvet and Wild At Heart, who obviously had a profound influence on The Pixies’ lyrics, passed away at the start of 2025.
The Pixies, after performing Death Horizon, then Dead, launched into the familiar intro to Here Comes Your Man, stirring the audience with the first of many fan favourites.
Following Nimrod’s Son from their 1987 debut mini-album Come On Pilgrim, the band played several more of their crowd-pleasers, including: Caribou, Bone Machine, Wave of Mutilation, and the rousing Monkey Gone to Heaven, all inspiring crowd singalongs.
The band then played Jane (The Night the Zombies Came), the first of the night’s new songs from the latest album, The Night the Zombies Came. The song is arguably the stand-out track from the 13-song horror-themed album, which has drawn mixed reviews from critics, albeit many favourable.
However, The Guardian newspaper dismissed the album as a “slide towards mediocrity,” declaring “the high point [is] a song about a headless chicken.” Whereas Brisbane’s LiveWire website insists there are “moments of greatness.”
Most of the new songs Black Francis plays on acoustic guitar. So, during the concert, the onstage appearance of the guitar assistant to swap Francis’ instrument generally indicated that a new number (acoustic) or an old favourite (electric) was about to be performed.
Back to the lyrics: I noted down some of the more memorable songlines in which the surrealist influence is obvious.
“First you run out of time, then you run out of space” (Motoroller).
“Sometimes I feel like a chicken pecking my way through the trees, when something aloftcuts my head right off. Now I’m dealing with decapitation” (Chicken).
“I’ve broken my leg back in Las Vegas, but they were so gracious I doubled my wages” (The Vegas Suite).
“Chained to the pillars, a 3-day party, I shake the walls and kill us all with holy fingers” (Gouge Away).
“What’s that floatin’ in the water? Oh, Neptune’s only daughter” (Mr Grieves).
“Good morning, Brigid, I can hear the bell … Is there a sheep gone down in the well?” (Primrose).
“There was an underwater guy who controlled the sea, got killed by ten million pounds of sludge from New York and New Jersey” (Monkey Gone to Heaven).
Two-thirds the way into their epic 30-song set, the band played another cover, The Jesus & The Mary Chain’s Head On.
The final song of the night (no encore) was Into the White, during which the Fortitude Music Hall lights went on and everyone could see each other clearly, while the stage filled with clouds of white smoke (dry ice).
The song itself was never an album track, only a B-side on the Here Comes Your Man single (1989).
The lyrics to Into the White are vague, and apart from the opening “there ain’t no day and there ain’t no night,” and mention of a quasar and hitchhiking on a meteorite, mainly consisted of bassist Emma Richardson repeating “into the white” at least 20 times.
Fans have long debated whether the song’s topic is about Space or recreational drug use (specifically heroin).
During Monkey Gone to Heaven, with the lyrics, “If man is five, then the Devil is six, and if the Devil is six, then God is seven”, most of the audience held their arms aloft with seven fingers extended.
I noticed, too, that an unusually high proportion of them were wearing spectacles, but I’m not sure if there’s a correlation.
The Pixies’ official music video for Jane (The Night the Zombies Came) link here.
Set List
In Heaven (Lady in the Radiator Song) [Peter Ivers & David Lynch cover]
Death Horizon
Here Comes Your Man
Nimrod’s Son
Caribou
Bone Machine
Tame
Wave of Mutilation
Isla de Encanta
Monkey Gone to Heaven
Jane (The Night the Zombies Came)
Motoroller
Kings of the Prairie
The Vegas Suite
Snakes
Gouge Away
Hey
Mr. Grieves
Cactus
Head On [The Jesus and Mary Chain cover]
Debaser
Primrose
Chicken
Mercy Me
Wave of Mutilation [acoustic]
Vamos
Greens and Blues
Where Is My Mind?
Into the White
Check out Alec Smart’s (@alecsmart_fotos) full gallery of this event HERE
Check out Lucas Packett’s (@lucas.packett.photography) full gallery of the Melbourne event on the 19th November HERE
Check out Dan Turner’s (@dapperdanphoto) full gallery of the Sydney event on the 13th November HERE
Follow PIXIES
Website – Spotify – Apple Music
YouTube – Facebook – Instagram
Twitter – TikTokFollow ELLIOT & VINCENT
Bandcamp – Instagram – Spotify
Press Release 20th November 2024 (below) HERE
PIXIES
announce Australian and
New Zealand Tour for
November 2025Band to celebrate vast catalogue celebrating two nights in each city
New album ‘The Night The Zombies Came’ Out Now
.AMNPLIFY – DB
