The video for “Can’t Knock the Hustle,” the lead single from Weezer’s Black Album, features gratuitous toe suckling, a gory wound inflicted by a spork and an awkward loner emotionally suffocated by another stereotype. That mood swing reflects the experience of seeing the alt-rock legacy act perform with an older, heavier giant of the genre: the Pixies.
This spring saw the bands’ second co-headlining tour through North America, after a 2018 run that grossed $7.5 million. Kicking off in Louisville, Kentucky, in early March, the 2019 double feature comes to a close this Friday on the Las Vegas Strip after 20 shows offering satisfying extremes.
Show opener Basement, a U.K. five-piece with many influences—grunge, noise rock, emo, pop-punk, post-hardcore—takes notable cues from the ’90s sound shaped by both headliners.
The Pixies’ 1988 debut album Surfer Rosa was actually released by iconic British indie label 4AD, and Black Francis and his crew have been delighting fans by sticking mostly with classic material from it and other old favorites like Doolittle (1989) and Trompe le Monde (1991) while on tour.
Pixies Photo by: Shawn Murphy
A no-frills stage puts the focus squarely on Francis’ voice, whether speak-singing with playful syncopation, singing plaintively or outright howling. Arguably the band’s biggest crossover hit, “Where Is My Mind,” begins with Francis and lead guitarist Joey Santiago strumming, the room plunging into blackness just as full instrumentals electrify the hook and lead Francis to the sick refrain: “With your feet in the air and your head on the ground …”
The energy and quirk of “Here Comes Your Man,” “Gigantic” and “Hey” are foils for harsher-edged tunes, from driving hard-rocker “Gouge Away” to the manic “Crackity Jones.” If new is what you’re after, the setlist has included two songs likely to appear on the Pixies’ upcoming album: stripped-down growler “In the Witching Hour” and sweeter, slower “Death Horizon.”
Ahead of the first Weezer/Pixies tour, a press release promised that the latter would play “anything they want,” and that has held true.
Weezer has been playing a greatest-hits bonanza peppered with fun covers from January’s Teal Album (’80s gems “Africa” by Toto and “Take on Me” by a-ha, as well as late-’90s smash “No Scrubs” by TLC). They don costumes for a barbershop-quartet version of “Buddy Holly,” and frontman Rivers Cuomo rides a rowboat on wheels for an acoustic “Island in the Sun.”
Despite Black Album dropping on March 1, “Can’t Knock the Hustle” is the only offering from it. Fans don’t seem disappointed, thanks to deep cuts (“Pork and Beans,” “Surf Wax America”) and radio gold (“Undone – The Sweater Song,” “Say It Ain’t So,” “Beverly Hills”).
With Pixies, you get the gritty magic of the “loudquietloud” sound that influenced Nirvana and Radiohead—perfected over three decades. With Weezer, you get colorful evolution album to album, and devotion to critics-be-damned schticks that obviously make these guys laugh.
Whatever your flavor of alt-rock, it’s a feast.
Mandalay Bay, 7 p.m. April 12, starting at $39.50 plus tax and fee. 888.929.7849
