Dani Gagnon
A&E Editor
For anyone who has ever hoped for the chance to review a release from the Pixies, we are now finding ourselves heartbroken, asking, did it have to come to this? The Pixies, formed in Boston in 1986, were originally composed of Black Francis (vocals/rhythm guitar), Joey Santiago (lead guitar), David Lovering (drums) and Kim Deal (bass).
Their time and work together produced four albums—two of which are technically perfect. Last week, the Pixies released their first new collection of material in more than 20 years and fans and listeners couldn’t be more disappointed.
We all knew that this would be the first release after Deal’s retirement. We have been emotionally prepping for that blow, but what we could not have been prepared for was the seemingly lack of evidence in Francis. Although Francis is indeed the vocalist for the release, he is almost completely unrecognizable, and thus sets the pace of anonymity and bleakness for the EP as a whole.
For those of us who have been taught to readily state: “Joey Santiago is the shit,” regardless of what anyone else says and those of us who know that “Doolittle” and “Surfer Rosa” are two perfect albums, the lack of recognizable features to the Pixies’s sound is draining.
Immediately, the opening lines of “Andro Queen” are dreary and austere making it sound like Francis just rolled out of bed with a head cold. “Another Toe in the Ocean” sounds like a generic high school band practicing in their mom’s garage and accredit Bowling for Soup as their inspiration. “What Goes Boom” revives unsettling flashbacks of teen pop artists that tried to cover the Pixies’ music.
Their remix of “Indy Pop” includes Francis muttering lines of, “You put the cock in cocktail, man/ I put the tail in wait, watch me walk,” which are terrible but the closest to a glimmer of hope that their old sound is not completely lost. If this album did anything successfully, it is that they made it utterly clear that these are not the Pixies we remembered.
I struggle to say what this EP sounds like, because all I can think of is what it is not. I want to say it sounds like a cover album of Pixies’ songs however, that’s not close enough! The lyrics themselves are generic and basic, nothing like the musical lyricism that came from a kindergarten and post-grad school intersection of theirs in the 80s.
There is no interaction between playfulness and threatening couplets; there’s no intimidating playground banter that could be just as effective on the city streets. The extra-terrestrial glow that the Pixies had at their height is gone. Francis cannot hope to produce such his iconic and terrifying blood curdling cry as he once did.
Francis said that “Indy Pop” is supposed to convey the message, “I don’t know if you’ll accept me; I don’t know if I accept you. But we have this memory. Can we do it again?” and as hard as it is to say, I don’t think we can.
This release is painful for fans and, I am sure, for the band as well. It almost makes me wish that they hadn’t reunited. I wish that they hadn’t gotten our hopes up only to crush us from our sky high expectations. I wish that they hadn’t reunited if it means they wouldn’t have released this EP.
Jayson Green of Pitchfork summarizes the albums as, “If one of these songs had started playing over the credits of an ‘American Pie’ knockoff that never reached theaters, you would not blink”. Soon this EP will be forgotten. Let’s let it go and remember the Pixies as they were.