The Pixies weren’t the only band that blazed the trail for alternative rock’s mainstream takeover in the ’90s, but they were the rare band that got to be trailblazers twice. When they regrouped at Coachella in 2004 after an 11-year breakup, they effectively ushered in another musical phenomenon: the indie-icon reunion-tour circuit. It granted the Massachusetts misfits a long overdue opportunity to play for the sort of massive crowds that their famous fans—Nirvana, Radiohead, and Weezer among them—had built on their influence. But what was once a valorous underdog-victory narrative has slowly turned into a cautionary tale about pissing away all the goodwill you’ve accrued.
For the rest of the 2000s, the Pixies toured and toured as if they were on a mission to perform for every last person on Earth who longed to hear “Debaser” in the flesh. By the time they finally decided to release new music again in 2013, not only was bassist Kim Deal gone, so too was any lingering excitement about the prospect of new Pixies music. What’s more, the three scatterbrained EPs they issued between 2013 and 2014—later compiled and reshuffled in album form as Indie Cindy—only served to answer those deflated expectations with a collection of songs that overcompensated for their lack of vigor and volatility by amping up the egregious eccentricity.
And yet despite that misfire, not to mention an aborted attempt to replace Deal with another Kim, the Pixies are giving it another go. With bassist Paz Lenchantin (A Perfect Circle, the Entrance Band) now officially sworn in, Head Carrier feels like an attempt to stabilize their course. The Pixies are no longer the legends resurfacing with their first album in 20 years; they’re just a steady-as-she-goes rock band cranking out another record. With Head Carrier, they’re essentially in their Voodoo Lounge phase, turning in the sort of middling, late-career album that will clog up the Pixies bin at your local record store when you’re looking to upgrade your worn-out copy of Surfer Rosa.
If Head Carrier has no ambitions to be a return to a form, it at least doesn’t incite the same sort of facepalm incredulity as Indie Cindy. (Seriously: what the fuck was “Bagboy”?) On tuneful songs like “Classic Masher” and “Might As Well Be Gone,” you can hear traces of the band that made “Here Comes Your Man” and “Velouria.” But there’s scant evidence of the band that made “Vamos” or “Gouge Away”—the volcanic outbursts that made their more melodic songs shine like diamonds in the coal.
The tension points that once made the Pixies so singular and striking—tiki-torched calm vs. eyeball-slicing chaos, sweetness vs. psychosis, American mythology vs. Spanish surrealism—have been thoroughly massaged out by this point. Yes, Kim Deal is missed, but so are Black Francis’ frightening mood swings, Joey Santiago’s blazing grease-rag guitars, and Dave Lovering’s concrete-cracking stomps. These Pixies are happy to just twang and jangle instead of slash and burn; on those rare occasions when they do try to rip up the asphalt (“Baal’s Back,” “Um Chagga Laga”), they sound less like ticking time-bomb terrors drunk on Dali and David Lynch than a mildly cranky Tex-Mex bar band.
As futile as it may be to hold the current Pixies up to the standard of records they made nearly 30 years ago, the comparisons are unavoidable given that they’re still executing the same playbook, only with less enthusiasm. Lenchantin is called on to do everything Kim Deal used to do, but while her plainspoken delivery is genial enough, it doesn’t exude the mischievous glee that made her predecessor such an effective balm to Francis’ tonsil-shredding howls. And given that Francis doesn’t get all that worked up about much here, the contrast between the two is muted—she’s more harmonic support than a full-on foil.
As such, Lenchantin’s lead vocal debut as a Pixie, “All I Think About Now,” is less notable for her performance than the lyrics Francis gave her to sing. Opening with an unsubtle echo of “Where Is My Mind?,” the song serves as Francis’ thank-you note to Deal, a fond remembrance of their working relationship to dispel the long-rumored animosity between the two. That sort of candor and poignancy are rare qualities in the Pixies canon—and credit Lenchantin, who came up with the lyrical concept, for nudging Francis into this uncharted terrain. But the singing-telegram approach feels sort of like, well, quitting your band by fax.
The truth is, if Head Carrier had arrived as the umpteenth Frank Black solo album, little about it would seem amiss. But coming from a band whose legacy was built on shock-and-awe transgression, Head Carrier feels overly pleasant and pedestrian. I’m reminded of that infamous Steve Albini interview from the early ’90s where the Surfer Rosa producer called his former clients “a band who, at their top-dollar best, are blandly entertaining college rock.” At the time, the quote seemed like blasphemy. Now, it feels like prophecy.
