Pixies: Classic or Dud

It's like a solid Frank Black album, unfortunately I'm not really interested in solid Frank Black albums.

Still need to get Oddballs and Black Sessions someday.

I'm trying to decide which is the more lighting-in-a-bottle band, the Pixies or the Smiths. Right now I'm thinking .. Pixies.

Given that the pixies wrote most of their best song within the span of about a year, I'd say Pixies too.
(also, these days I just feel too conflicted listening to anything that Morrissey had a hand in, so)

🏈 Joey & Dave help predict the 2021 @NFL Season - for the @nyjets and the @Patriots respectively.

Check them out with @SPIN here:https://t.co/s9XbvdvbS0 pic.twitter.com/z6arEPwdFM

— PIXIES (@PIXIES) September 10, 2021

Joey is a Jets fan? Wow, guess I don't like Pixies anymore.

lol I just chuckled because I scrolled past this and assumed it was like an NFL promoted tweet or something, took me far too long to put all the pieces together

And this I know
The Jets 16 and 0

if man is five
(if man is five)
then the devil is six
(then the devil is six)
the the JETS ARE ZERO
THE JETS ARE ZERO

Dave looking totes ready for a woodworking & magic tricks show on PBS.

Ngl, I kind of want that sweater

I got no lips, I got no tongue
I got a broken Gase...

Joey’s Jets commentary in that article is pretty funny

Woke up in the middle of the night with the belated epiphany, with well over 30 years of listening to this band under my belt, that for all the attention the Pixies gets for its loud-quiet dynamics and screaming and guitar squall, its lyrical world-building - the Spanglish, the gruesome imagery, the surfing stuff, the space stuff - remains utterly novel and just as key to its success.

Do the reunion records betray that world that they built, or add to it, or just ignore it?

I don't know if the reunion records ignore that world but I'm definitely ignoring the reunion records

disclaimer: i'm a jerkass.

the reunion records effectively ruined pixies for me. it's self-parody done so well that the it completely and totally eviscerates its source material. i can't even appreciate their initial run anymore. it all sounds like an unfunny joke at this point.

maybe i never liked them to begin with??? idk.

they suck though, those reunion albums. a lot of folks said they were passable but kind of boring "pixies by numbers" but if you really sit with those albums like i could with the older stuff (at one point in time anyway), they will drive you mad. stupid lyrics, plodding musicianship, and just an general overall vibe of bad taste in the air.

anyway. yeah. breeders were a cool band.

sorry for typos. pixie make mad.

Breeders are a cool band, All Nerve was great.

I've never heard the reunion albums but I saw the Pixies with Kim in 2004 and 2010 or 2011 and both were good. Zero interest in seeing them post-KD.

I've successfully ignored the reunion albums, but I wish I ignored the reunion, period. Finally seeing them live, even a couple of times with Deal, left a bad taste in my mouth. I interviewed Charles/Frank/Black once, around the time of the reunion, and after complaining about contemporary country and alt-rock stations pandering to their audiences, giving them what they want and nothing more, I asked:

Me: But don’t you think these reunion shows are in danger of pandering?

FB: Good point. Yes, there is a certain amount of pandering there. We are just playing the A-list. We’re not trying to challenge everybody. We’re trying to satisfy a lot of customers who have never seen us before, who know the records or at least have the best-of collection. They’re curious about the band, and we’re scratching their itch. We sound just like the records. Here we are – ta-dah! We feel like that’s really what people are paying for. We’re not doing the “how’s it going out there!?” and then kicking out a beach ball. We don’t do any of that. We do “La La Love You” and “Tame” back to back. We’re still raw. We’re not trying to be poignant or meaningful. We’re doing our thing, take it or leave it. People are more or less taking it. ... So, yeah, I guess I stand a hypocrite.

I guess good for them for making new music, but also, bad for us.

Personally, still love the records.

Not a fan of most of the reunion albums, but Beneath the Eryie (the most recent) was fine, though still not a patch on the original run. The reunion show I saw in 2004 was great, but to be fair, I never saw them during the original run. The second show I saw five or six years later was pretty meh.

I thought Head Carrier was rather good indeed but I suspect Indie Cindy killed off the idea that them releasing new music was in any way a good idea

wonder if the pixies ever heard this giant sand song from 1986 because there is so much in it that sounds just like them:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TE6SCr-dKWU

*except better

Honestly the Pixies could go on an Ivermectin Not Immigration world tour with Eric Clapton and Kid Rock and it wouldn't besmirch the greatness of the original records for me

nickb otm. giant sand rules.

lol eephus

bluefinger by frank black sounded like the fifth pixies record that never was

yeah i’ve thought that too, i assume that’s why he went back to the Black Francis name for it

That Giant Sand song is uncanny. Things like this always make me think of Brian Eno's concept of "scenius"... even if we remember these things as isolated bolts of inspiration, there's always similar sounding stuff from the same era which everyone just forgot about.

When I saw them live a couple of years ago it felt obvious that for all of them being in the Pixies is now just a regular gig that pays the bills, nothing more. It made the whole experience feel oddly perfunctory and disappointing. There's no emotional connection with the audience, no sense that they enjoy still playing these songs or being in a band at all. It sounded like Kim Shattuck in her brief stint in the band tried to bring a bit of a rock n' roll energy back to the line-up, and was told "The Pixies don't do that." Pfft.

I often go back and forth about whether I still *need* to keep listening to the Pixies, or if it's something I just cling onto as a comforting reminder of my youth. When I first heard the BBC Sessions album (the first Pixies record I got hold of) it was so visceral, strange and intense it was almost too much to handle, took a lot of listens to actually get my head around it. I still love that album and the rest of the Come On Pilgrim -> Trompe Le Monde era, but it really does feel to me like they diluted the impact of their original brief span by returning as an endlessly touring greatest hits act. It's weird to think that they are now basically as mainstream as any other band from the eighties/nineties locked into endless nostalgia tours.

The new stuff I've heard is *okay* for the most part, but I'm just not interested in it. It's just lacking whatever chemistry they originally had (and lacking Kim, possibly the two are related). They really should have put new stuff out in 2004, but all we got was "Bam Thwok" as a glimpse of what could've been.

all we got was "Bam Thwok" as a glimpse of what could've been.

Mentioned before on ILX some time over the years, but verbatim exchange I heard in a club at iirc a Spoon show.

Person One: Have you heard the new Pixies song?
Person Two: No, is it any good?
Person One: No. I mean, I haven't heard it yet, either, but I heard it's not good.

I liked it.

I think it was really only two tracks on Bluefinger that sounded like Pixies.

It was a Kim Deal song, and she never got many writing credits in the band, so maybe it's her voice that makes it sound like pixies.

I personally remember being really disappointed when I first heard Bam Thwok, so I've just avoided all the reunion material since then, but I've still cooled on the band based on the mere existence of so much reunion material and the blatant cynicism of the whole endeavor.

When I saw them live a couple of years ago it felt obvious that for all of them being in the Pixies is now just a regular gig that pays the bills, nothing more.

They had already begun going through the motions thirty years ago. When I first saw them perform, in 1989, they were *incredible*, the place was crackling with energy. By the time I saw them next, a couple of years later, the spark was gone. It was really dismaying. I still adore the first few records, though.

Same experience for me except the spark disappeared between 1988-->1989.

The reunions are cash grabs, but I wouldn't call them cynical so much as oddly unimaginative from a once imaginative bandleader and songwriter. If anything, it was the highly un-cynical to retire the pixies name in 1992 as the spark had gone and Frank wanted to focus more on rinky-dink sounds and start a fresh songbook. If the songs on the first few Frank Black records had been released as Pixies albums without Kim (and maybe with a better drummer, and a regular keyboard player) that would have really affected the band's legacy far more, even though the songs, and especially the arrangements, on those first solo lps are sometimes quite good and certainly far more memorable than the reunion tracks.

That Giant Sand song is uncanny. Things like this always make me think of Brian Eno's concept of "scenius"

It really is uncanny! That said, even beyond the proto-Americana on college radio, the default sound of a lot of Boston bands in the mid-80s involved spaghetti western guitar solos and thrashy bits here and there - The Blackjacks, Neighborhoods, Dogmatics were all getting local commercial airplay and videos on our UHF MTV competitor with "cowpunk" songs. Throw in the surrealism of Mission of Burma/Volcano Suns and Throwing Muses, and the Pixies were distilling a lot of things that were very present around them.

They certainly weren't as consistent but I think the highs are just as high on Bossanova, Trompe Le monde, Frank Black, Teenager Of The Year and Cult Of Ray. I really adore them all and even love some of them more than the earliest stuff, might be because they don't get as much love and play from most fans? I know I'm not alone on Bossanova (Santiago's favorite).

Bossanova has always been the one I listen to the most, but they're all still good to me. Now, Frank Black solo, I admit it's been a while since I listened to any of his 30 or whatever records, but I have a hunch the first couple do indeed remain solid and/or underrated/overlooked.

They're gold, I'm not sure there's anything I don't like on the first solo album. Quite fond of Dog In The Sand but everything else after the first 3 are a very mixed bag. Recently read that Cult Of Ray was badly received but I had a ton of fun with it.

Didn't know there was a limited edition bonus disc

Oh, they're all on Oddballs, which I still need

"The Golem" (the 1 disc version) is pretty good later period Black Francis. Produced and with keyboards by Eric Drew Feldman.

Bossanova was such a letdown to me after Doolittle. I think I only listened to it twice and haven’t heard it in 30 years. I didn’t even buy Trompe Le Monde. That cover of “Head On” was such a bizarre thing to do.

I like Bossanova and still listen to it, but otherwise relate to your experience. It was a big enough drop in quality that I just never even bothered after that.

i still totally adore bossanova

particularly the really short songs

Weird, I don't hear a drop in quality at all. I think if anything it's even more aggressive in its non-conformity. Begins with an instrumental (fake) classic surf song, followed by an impenetrable aggro burst, followed by a mix of pop-nuggets, space-weirdness, more aggro experiments and compact epics like "The Happening."