Weezer and the Pixies, last night at Sprint Center (photos, setlist)
Weezer / Pixies
Sprint Center
Tuesday, March 26
Weezer is enjoying another “moment,” thanks to a *checks notes* Toto cover? OK, then. The band has gone for the “wholesome” corner of the market in recent years — no more songs about frontman Rivers Cuomo wanting to have sex with underage half-Japanese girls. (If you’ve heard the Weezer episode of Song Exploder, you know that the band’s song lyrics are now quite literally formulaic.) This all means the new songs are less creepy and misogynist, but also less catchy and interesting.
There were a whole hell of a lot of kids at last night’s Sprint Center show, and I mean kid kids. Not high school kids: elementary school kids, some of them with fauxhawks.

But, hey: The band’s still fun, and guitarist Brian Bell can still rip a solid guitar solo. It’s like going to see Green Day or something. It’s a party for the whole family, replete with singalongs and enough cheap pops from mentioning Kansas City that I lost count after about a dozen. Throw in five cover songs, and Weezer is basically your uncles all getting together to rock it out and show you they still know how to party.
That barreling race to the end of “Surf Wax America” still works, though, so that was something.








When seeing Pixies, you know that neither frontman Black Francis nor any of the rest of the band will engage in any stage banter whatsoever, and that’s all fine, mainly because at one point halfway through the set, they went from “Wave of Mutilation” into “Isla de Encanta” into “Monkey Gone to Heaven” into “Gigantic,” and it ruled. That, alone, was worth the drive from Lawrence, parking, walking seven blocks, and hanging around waiting for the show to start.



We missed openers Basement. Sorry, Basement.
All photos by Nick Spacek
Weezer setlist
Buddy Holly (barbershop quartet version)
My Name Is Jonas
The Good Life
In the Garage
Troublemaker
Undone – The Sweater Song
Surf Wax America
El Scorcho
Can’t Knock the Hustle
Paranoid (Black Sabbath cover)
Island in the Sun (Rivers solo acoustic aboard the S.S. Weezer)
Take On Me (a‐ha cover) (Rivers solo acoustic aboard the S.S. Weezer)
Up the Beach (Jane’s Addiction cover)
Beverly Hills
Pork and Beans
Africa (Toto cover)
Say It Ain’t So
Perfect Situation
Hash Pipe
—
No Scrubs (TLC cover)
Buddy Holly