They used to sing about slicing up eyeballs; now they're carrying severed heads. The Pixies, pioneers of alternative rock, have returned as a full band and with a renewed surrealism. "Head Carrier," is only the sixth studio album by the underground icons who went on hiatus at their height in the early 1990s. Yet the Pixies' reunion was marred by the departure in 2013 of bassist Kim Deal who had long had a tense relationship with frontman Black Francis.
On "Head Carrier," the Pixies bring back their earlier energy levels -- and also find a missing element, a female voice, in the form of Argentine-born bassist Paz Lenchantin who has formally joined the band after temporarily replacing Deal on tour. Lenchantin interjects the occasional dulcet vocal line on "Head Carrier," balancing the harder-edged Black Francis as the Pixies unleash their signature rapid-fire bursts of surfer rock. "Three dudes and a girl -- that has always been our presentation emotionally and we've got back to that now," Black Francis said. He indirectly acknowledged criticism of the band's last album, 2014's "Indie Cindy," which came after Deal's departure and a full decade after the Pixies reunited to tour, raising massive expectations over whether the band still had the same creative spark. "I stand by it. I think 'Indie Cindy' is a good record. It represents what was happening to the band at the time," said Francis, who performed as Frank Black during the Pixies' downtime.
Originally from Boston, the Pixies initially found their strongest following in Britain and continental Europe -- where they will start their tour for "Head Carrier." But the band also laid the groundwork for the US alternative music boom in the early 1990s as Nirvana in particular took inspiration in the Pixies' rough-around-the-edges guitar and lyrical abstraction. "Debaser," one of the band's most famous songs, drew from Salvador Dali's surrealist film "Un Chien Andalou" with its imagery of slicing an eyeball with a razor. On the title track of "Head Carrier," Francis references Saint Denis, the patron saint of Paris, a Christian martyr who according to legend would still preach after execution by carrying his severed head. "A three-headed monster cut Denny's head right off / You can't be too chill, you can't be too zen / I'm going down the drain again," Francis sings. Saint Denis tangentially ties the album together with the later track "Plaster of Paris," with Francis drawn by how plaster was first manufactured in the neighborhood of Montmartre -- where Denis met his death.
Letting the music drive the songs, Francis turns to an onomatopoeia-driven neologism on the album's first single "Um Chagga Lagga." "Um chagga lagga on the side of the road / Um chagga lagga in the Languedoc," he sings, referring the wine-growing region of southern France. Francis steps back from the surrealism at times on "Head Carrier" as on "All I Think About Now." With a guitar calling to mind the Pixies' classic ""Where Is My Mind?", the song is a lyrical thank-you to Deal, also known for her band The Breeders. Francis said he found the lyricism most "magical" when the imagery flowed freely. "Sometimes when I'm writing a song I really feel so strongly about the poetry, in the sense that it is supposed to follow a surrealist, subconscious kind of thread, that I'm not fighting it, I'm going along with it," Francis said.
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Pixie secrets
• The band chose their name after guitarist Joey Santiago was flipping through the dictionary and happened upon the word “pixie.”
• Black Francis’ real name is Charles Michael Kittridge Thompson IV. His stage name comes from a joke his father had once made about how he was saving that name in case he had another son.
• The band attempted to recruit Kim Deal’s twin sister Kelley to be their drummer, but it didn’t work out. Kelley would go on to play guitar in her sister’s other band, The Breeders.
• Kim Deal used the stage name Mrs. John Murphy as an ironic feminist joke on the band’s earliest records, inspired by a conversation with a woman who wanted to be called by her husband’s name
