The Breeders

Manchester Academy, 14/4/08.

I took a half day off work for this as I wanted to take my time and not rush really. My mate Tim was coming with me as he is a huge Pixies fan. Tim was going to travel straight from work in Liverpool and we'd arranged to meet in Big Hands next to the academy.


I got up to Manchester mid afternoon booked into the hotel and went up into town to get something to eat. I got back to the Academy area about 7 ish and went to Big Hands bought a drink and took my book out and read whilst waiting for Tim to turn up.


Tim turned up soon and we had a quick drink and headed off to the venue just gone 7:30. We walked straight in to my surprise as I knew the show was sold out. I wasn't sure who the support was though I did check it a week or so back.


It turned out to be Jim Noir a Mancunian singer/songwriter. I have his album from a couple of years back and liked it alot. He mostly played new material here though and I only recognised a couple of songs. Good opener though and I must check out his new stuff more closely.

The Breeders seemed to take a while to come on and Tim and I had parked ourselves on Kelly's side. I took a couple of photos of the stage just to test the light etc and got told straight away by a security guy to stop taking photos!!. What? erm why? an argument ensued and the fact was no photos allowed. Strange, but there you go. So here's a shot of the back of Kelly's gold Les Paul.

They played a pretty big set and in Pixies style rattled through the songs without barely a break or any banter with the audience. The main talk was between Kim and Kelly themselves. There was something here that was lacking, I don't know what it was but I just wanted them to produce 'more'. I don't think I'm totally sold on the new material yet and perhaps that had something to do with it. In truth I didn't enjoy them as much as I wanted to. Tim enthused about them, naturally and I agreed to be polite. Saying that Tim's view was that he thought they were better than he expected with mine being not as good as expected I suppose it comes down to ones 'expectation'.

I enjoyed the evening as a whole though, I left Tim in Big Hands at about 1am as I had to get the early train back to work. Tim left there about 1:30 ish apparently and didn't get to work 'till 12:30 the next day. Oh to be a civil servant.