Pixies are back
After years of obstacles, the Pixies have overcome with a new bassist-singersongwriter and a new album.
Something has changed in the Pixies. Not so much in the band’s music mind you. This Boston-bred wild bunch’s style of jagged guitars, loud-toquiet, punk-to-pop song structure change-ups, psychedelia, dissonance and surf-influenced twang hasn’t evolved much over the last 30-plus years, although it’s perhaps become a bit more polished.
But the tensions between singer-songwriter bandleader Black Francis and bassistwriter-backup singer Kim Deal haven’t always promoted personal harmony in a group that also includes lead guitaristsinger Joey Santiago and drummer David Lovering. Consequently, the Pixies split after the release of the group’s fourth album, “Trompe le Monde,” in 1991. Black Francis (real name Charles Thompson) embarked on a successful solo career under the moniker “Frank Black,” and Deal turned her attention to her own all-female band, the Breeders.
Then suddenly, in the early 2000s, it looked like the Pixies might patch things up again, with Deal back in the studio at work on songs that eventually would become the band’s 2014 return, “Indie Cindy.” But again, Deal took a walk — permanently this time — early in the recording process.
At that point, Santiago said in a recent phone interview, the future looked dim.
“Hell yeah. OH yeah. OH yeah,” the guitarist said from his Los Angeles home. “We had to think about that one for a while, you know, because, uh, it took a couple of days for us to get our heads around what just went on. It was a shell-shock. But yeah, we overcame it all right.”
The Pixies overcame it by finding and hiring a new bassist-singer-songwriter named Paz Lenchantin, who seems to be the shot of sunshine the rest of the Pixies so desperately needed just in time for their latest album, “Head Carrier.”
“Paz? She’s got a very, very positive vibe. Great work ethic. Great suggestions when it comes to putting songs together. Always, her suggestions are always on the money. And just positive. Everything’s positive, you know? We nicknamed her ‘Paz-itive.’ “
Proof of Lenchantin’s positivity is that she wrote a melody called “All I Think About Now,” then asked Black Francis to put lyrics to it as a thankyou note to Kim Deal, expressing Lenchantin’s gratitude for the opportunity to fill Deal’s vacancy in the Pixies.
“Yeah, you know?” Santiago said of Lenchantin. “That’s the kinda gal she is.”
The drummer has been playing the songs from “Head Carrier” over and over on the road for about two years now, but he says he still plays them with equal enthusiasm every night. “Yeah, you know. There’s gonna be a couple of moments, a couple of nights where you’re tired of doin’ it, but once you’re out there, it’s fine. You just do it.”
As for whatever might set “Head Carrier” apart from past Pixies works, he says, “I don’t think it’s a departure of anything. It’s just because the past Pixies work was all over the map, from ‘Here Comes Your Man’ to ‘Dead’ to ‘Tame,’ you know. We had all these weird styles goin’ on, and this album has the same kind of elements to it. So, yeah, it lives right at home. Lives right up there with the catalog of the Pixies.”
Is “Head Carrier” the best Pixies album to date?
“Ha ha. That’s a good question. Uhh … it … uh … It’ll hold up as a great album. That’s all I can say. You know, it could possibly be my favorite record — at the moment. You know, for the Pixies. But yeah, yeah. It’s fresh in my ears, and it’s great and that’s all you could hope for in an album. In any album.
“We’ve had very successful tours ever since then. A few nights at the Opera House, the Hollywood Bowl. Can’t really complain.”