The Pixies are a band that need no introduction. Bursting into flames and breaking up before it was cool, it wasn’t until primary songwriter Charles ‘Black Francis’ Thompson started bringing fellow Pixies guitarist Joey Santiago onstage during his solo tour that the band reformed after their seven year stint in the late eighties and early nineties. The rumours for their reunion circled early when ex-Pixies drummer David Lovering opened Thompson’s show with his magic performances, and the moment the inevitable reunion tour was announced, tickets sold out in minutes, highlighting just how big the band had grown in their decade-long absence from music.
Now it’s some 12 years after their first reunion rehearsals, and the band are gearing up to release their sixth full length album, titled Head Carrier. Since founding bassist Kim Deal’s departure in 2013, the Pixies have instated Paz Lenchantin as the other half of their rhythm section. Talking to Lovering, it is clear that having Lenchantin in the band has allowed for growth within the Pixies.
“She’s a great bassist, I mean her musicianship is unparalleled. She’s fantastic. She plays so well now that I play better because I don’t want to be embarrassed around her [laughs]. She’s a joy, she’s funny, and the other thing I can say is that she’s been with us for three years now, and even though she’s been playing and recording with us for three years, she’s still the new woman, and the three gentlemen, Joe, Charles and myself, are still behaving like she’s the new woman. So we’re all getting along really well now,” Lovering laughs.
Despite a key member change and almost three decades between the band’s formation and now, Lovering believes the Pixies’ tumultuous past hasn’t affected the band’s internal operations or dynamics.
“I think we’re the same, we still play our instruments the same. Even though they say you get older and wiser, I think when you get older you just put up with bullshit more easily. We’ve had 30 years to get along with each other, so we’re pretty pro at doing it. We’re the same band really, the only difference is we’re a little bigger now than when we were a younger band. The places that we play are bigger, but when you look at that, it’s still the same shows, whether the venues are bigger or smaller. There really isn’t a difference.”
The band’s surefooted leader Thompson successfully navigated the murky waters of adding to the Pixies’ stellar catalogue with Indie Cindy, but not without some alleged resistance from Deal. Immediately after she quit the band, ‘Bagboy’ was released, the leading single from the run of EPs that would eventually form their fifth album.
“Indie Cindy came about in 2011, seven years after we reunited in 2004, and for those seven years we played old music. We did festivals, and our own shows, just playing our old material. We eventually realised that we were doing it for longer than we were initially a band. That was kinda surreal, and it was the kick in the pants that got us to record, and that’s how Indie Cindy happened. Our way of thinking didn’t change, and that’s what led us to Head Carrier.”
Skip forward two years, and the band are days away from releasing Head Carrier. The album is loaded with bombastic tunes that tower over beautiful, intimate moments, offering fans a natural progression of the Pixies’ sonic journey without straying too far from their jagged path. ‘All I Think About Now’ stands out immediately, as it’s the first album track to feature leading female vocals since Doolittle. As it turns out, the song might well be Lovering’s favourite from the new record.
“It was interesting, because we had seven weeks to write the majority of the songs for Head Carrier, so we went into the studio and had the list ready. With three days left at RAK Studios, Paz said she had an idea for a song. That night, she played it, and Charles said ‘you sing it, it’s your song, but I’ll write the lyrics for it’.”
“All the songs around ‘All I Think About Now’ took weeks and weeks of honing, but this song we wrote in one night and recorded the next day. To me, it’s the most classic-sounding Pixies song on the record with Joe’s guitar, the breaks, the loud to the soft and all the stuff like that. The ironic thing is it was really written by Paz, our newest member, in the last couple of minutes!”
Lovering isn’t wrong, with the song buzzing in with eerie falsetto vocals reminiscent of ‘Where Is My Mind?’ while the guitar slides up and down over a stationary bassline. While the verses lie resplendent with soft acoustic guitar, the chorus builds into a cramped mid-tempo wall of noise that the Pixies are famous for.
Other songs on Head Carrier offer touches of innovation, such as the warm ‘Might As Well Be Gone’, but ‘All I Think About Now’ will be the bane of Kim Deal devotees, because Lenchantin nails the Pixies aesthetic perfectly. Not only that, but Lenchantin is the first person to score co-writing credits for a song with Charles since 1989’s platinum-selling Doolittle.
“For all of the years we’ve done it, Charles would introduce the song on acoustic guitar, and every once in awhile he’d ask for things, so we’d add our parts to them. We share our ideas when we’re honing and arranging the songs, but Charles writes really good songs, and he definitely writes them better than I do, so I don’t have too much input on some of the tracks. I can get by with my drumming just fine [laughs].”
Even though bands can fall into the trap of hating their biggest songs like Oasis and the Beastie Boys, Lovering claims to enjoy playing Pixies hits, regardless of how many times he’s played the tune.
“I like playing some older songs better, because they’re like riding a bike, they’re fun to play and they haven’t lost any favour with me at all. A song like ‘Where Is My Mind?’ is a song that would never bother me, we play that every show. It was funny, because I listened to the version of it from Surfer Rosa or whatever, I think a year ago, and I realised all this time since 2004 I’ve been playing it wrong. It’s only a little thing, it’s not going to affect the song and I don’t think anyone’s noticed, but I have. It makes it interesting again.”
The Head Carrier World Tour marks the band’s fourth Aussie tour, and it’s thanks to the logistics of the Pixies’ touring schedule that allows Australia to be among the first to hear their new songs live for the first time mixed in with a smattering of iconic nineties tracks. That means that the Pixies are unveiling their new album in Australia before their homeland of America. That’s kind of a big deal.
PIXIES 2017 AUSTRALIAN TOUR DATES
Thursday, 2nd March 2017 – Riverstage, Brisbane
Saturday, 4th March 2017 – Margaret Court Arena, Melbourne
Tuesday, 7th March 2017 – Hordern Pavilion, Sydney
