Pixies are approaching touring a little differently at present. Performing two consecutive nights in each city, the alternative rock legends play a pair of fan-favourite albums – 1990’s Bossanova and their 1991 follow-up, Trompe le Monde – in full on night one, while night two’s setlist draws from Pixies’ entire back catalogue, including 2024’s The Night the Zombies Came.
I’m particularly fond of the opening line of The Night The Zombies Came’s opener, Primrose, for obvious reasons. Joey Santiago, Pixies’ co-founder and lead guitarist, takes a beat before reciting the lyrics with a smile, “‘Good morning, Brigid, I can hear the bell!’ – that’s right, yeah, yeah!” Although there’s a shortage of songs featuring my name, Joey is a more popular choice, with Santiago singling out “Run Joey Run” by Dave Geddes as an example.
The Pixies’ latest album is the first to feature new bassist Emma Richardson (Band of Skulls), who replaced Paz Lenchantin. When Santiago calls in from his Los Angeles home, he reveals this current incarnation already has some new material on the boil: “We recorded some demos over a year ago with Tom [Dalgety, who also produced, mixed and engineered The Night the Zombies Came].”
So will Australian audiences be treated to a preview of one of their brand-new songs? “It’s like it’s too risky for us to test out the new songs like we used to back in the day, and see how it works out,” the guitarist laments, pointing out that poor-quality smartphone footage tends to get shared and widely criticised. “But, you know, it’s up to us to be brave and just do it.”
While we’re on the subject of phone etiquette, Santiago commends Pixies fans for keeping their phones in their pockets during gigs — well, for most of the time. “Oh, they’re pretty respectful. They do watch it… But when “Where Is My Mind?” comes on, everyone has their phone out.”
According to Santiago, “Where Is My Mind?” is to his band what “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” is to the Rolling Stones.
Although Pixies debuted their new shows in Dublin back in March 2024, North American fans were the first to experience their two-night residency shows – the same format they’re bringing to Australia – when the band officially launched that touring approach this June in Las Vegas.
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Given that both nights promise completely different setlists and experiences, it’s unsurprising that some fans have attended both shows. “Yeah, we do know some people have gone to back-to-back shows. If they’re down the front and have purple hair, we’ll recognise them,” Santiago jests. “This one fella – I think he’s going to Japan, he might even be there [in Australia]. He’s a cyclist and he goes to our shows, so I see him go back-to-back.”
The first pair of Australian shows Pixies will play this time around are at Fremantle Prison. Have Pixies performed in a prison before? “No, uh-uh,” Santiago confirms, shaking his head. “It’ll bring back memories of my adolescent years – no, I’ve never been in prison [laughs]. Yeah, it’ll be exciting. There will be a vibe there for sure. ‘Cause when we play – we have played a bull ring in Spain, it’s like, ‘Oh, wow!’ You know? We totally soak in the atmosphere, of course – that’s what architecture’s for.”
So which songs from Bossanova and Trompe le Monde does Santiago particularly enjoy performing live? “I like playing ‘Space [(I Believe In)]’ from Trompe [le Monde], just because that’s a really full-on rock intro,” the guitarist explains. “And then, from Bossa Nova, ‘Dig for Fire’ – a combination of I like what I’m playing and just because the audience loves it. We hardly play it [‘Dig for Fire’], that’s one of the reasons why I like playing that one.”
While rehearsing lesser-performed songs such as “Dig for Fire” ahead of these album-in-full shows, Santiago confirms it took a second for his muscle memory to kick back in. “I would get the notes, obviously, when I’m going through it. And then you figure out where it is on the guitar neck, ‘cause there’s so many ways to play one note on the guitar, you know? So, yeah, when it came back I was like, ‘Ah, finally, this is where it was!’”
Pixies purists will be relieved to read that Bossanova and Trompe le Monde will also be performed in their tracklisted order during those shows. “It is in order and that’s a nice shtick to do, but, man! There’s a lot of guitar changes along the way, too,” Santiago bemoans. “If we were to write down a setlist, we would clump one guitar into one section and another guitar into another section.”
After clocking a guitar neck poking into frame, in the room from which Santiago Zooms, I ask Santiago how many guitars he owns at present. “I don’t know,” he confesses, glancing around. “Right now, there’s five – no, six, in here. And then there’s more upstairs. I wish I was more of a vintage collector – now, they’re so expensive – but I was never that guy. I mostly like getting pedals and stuff, so that’s my thing. I’ve got my favourite guitars already, so I’m set with that.
“The first guitar I had was my brother’s guitar that was hanging up on the wall, and I took over it. I just thought it was a decorative piece for the longest time, it’s a beautiful instrument, until I took it down and started playing it. A few years went by just looking at it – I was mesmerised by it. And when I picked it up, it was, ‘My, God, this thing plays! It plays fine.’”
One of the first riffs Santiago attempted on his brother’s guitar was “Day Tripper” by the Beatles. “It was a heck of a time trying to figure that one out,” he admits. “As a kid, it was a good thing to learn. When I got that one, I thought I was on the right path already.”
Memorable, rhythmic, repetitive, and bursting with personality, you can hear how much “Day Tripper”’s guitar riff inspired Santiago’s mode of playing; he also hoped to develop an instantly recognisable guitar tone that would stand out amongst the fast, heavy metal-style playing that was popular around that time.
Take his inspired work in “Here Comes Your Man”, for example. To create the idiosyncratic main riff (which, let’s face it, totally makes the song), Santiago double-tracked a 12-string Rickenbacker and a Telecaster. I can actually picture “your man” sauntering down the street, looking nonchalant and cool, while listening to his guitar melody. Santiago beams. “Oh, that’s good that those visuals happen, because I like when music does that: the Spaghetti Western music, especially any of [Ennio] Morricone’s stuff – you see ‘the guy’, you know? I definitely shoot for that, yeah.”
Have there been moments when Santiago has patted himself on the back in the studio after coming up with something unquestionably brilliant? “Not enough, I’m pretty self-deprecating there,” he considers. “But on The Night the Zombies Came, the last one, we were having a laugh with some stuff. I was really just fooling around with the guitar for a lot of the solos – a lot of stuff, actually – which is surprising for me. But it was the first album [where] I had really felt free, you know?
“And, yeah, we were just joking about with the parts. We were talking about getting a character for that song ‘Chicken’ – the chicken – and fooling around with what kind of thing a chicken would sound like. But it wasn’t deliberate, I wasn’t doing harmonic picking, going [mimics chicken-clucking, guitar-picking sounds] – I wasn’t gonna do that. It was gonna be something more subtle.”
Once reminded that 2026 marks 40 years since Pixies formed – when original bassist Kim Deal and drummer Dave Lovering completed the lineup of Santiago and frontman Black Francis – he exclaims, “Oh, boy!”
“I mean, it’s gonna sound corny, but we just took it one step at a time,” he continues. “We wanted enough songs for the first show, and we timed ourselves, ‘Okay, we got 20 minutes. We can be the opening act, we can be the first band on a Wednesday night or something,’ you know? And we already had some of the songs ready, but we took our best 20 minutes and we presented it. And then, God!” He pauses to reflect. “Nah, it didn’t even come to mind we were gonna be here 40 years later, I don’t think. Yeah, it’s crazy.”
It’s worth noting that Pixies haven’t been a thing for 40 consecutive years, however. The band split in 1992, after releasing Trompe le Monde, before reforming in 2004 to play Coachella and embark upon a subsequent world tour.
When asked to share one of his Pixies-related pinch-yourself moments, Santiago offers, “I would say when we headlined the Reading Festival [in 1990] and got the honour of doing that – that was a crazy moment. There were bands that were on before us [e.g. The Cramps, Inspiral Carpets] that were so great, too.”
Pixies are touring Australia and New Zealand between November 8th-27th. Ticket information is available here and here.
