Evidently, I was one of the few critics who actually liked<\/i> Pixies\u2019 2014 comeback effort Indie Cindy<\/i>, but perhaps that\u2019s because I don\u2019t worship at the altar of Doolittle <\/i>like they do. Yes, Indie Cindy <\/i>was comprised of three four-song EPs and recorded without founding bassist Kim Deal, but much of it was still darn good rock music, albeit in service of an approach different than what guided Surfer Rosa <\/i>all those years ago.<\/p>\n
New bass player Paz Lenchantin is now a full-fledged member and the other three Pixies remain on a songwriting tear, and so two years later Head Carrier <\/i>aims to continue the story\u2026from Trompe Le Monde<\/i>, the original band\u2019s final effort in 1991. Immediately the sound, style and attitude springs from that era, with the interesting experiments and detours into convention of Indie Cindy <\/i>shelved in favor of a more straight-ahead garage rock approach\u2026albeit played by three dudes in their 50s and a talented bassist in her forties who has played with A Perfect Circle and Billy Corgan\u2019s Zwan project.<\/p>\n
\u00a0Much like Indie Cindy<\/i>, though, the music is full-bodied and immediate, full of loud guitars that roar instead of buzz and drums that pound instead of click, and it sounds great. \u201cHead Carrier\u201d is full Neil Young \u2013 the route that all alt-rockers from the \u201890s inevitably wind up on, if they don\u2019t fade away first \u2013 and it\u2019s a delight. Black screaming his way through \u201cBaal\u2019s Back\u201d is hardly necessary but a lot of fun for fans of the original quartet of Pixies classics. \u201cMight As Well Be Gone\u201d probably sounds the most like the past and suffers the most for it; looking backward is not this band\u2019s strong suit. <\/p>\n
There isn\u2019t a moment of wasted space here; at a sinewy 33 minutes, the dozen songs touch on the sounds of the past but, for the most part, don\u2019t revel in them or pretend it\u2019s still 1990, and this is what makes the record work. Head Carrier <\/i>barrels through its highlights, from the title cut to the short jangly \u201cTalent\u201d to the rollicking \u201cUm Chagga Lagga\u201d (the most fun song here) to the Deal tribute \u201cAll I Think About Now,\u201d which rivals (on purpose) \u201cMight As Well Be Gone\u201d for track that sounds most like past glories. <\/p>\n
In that moment, hearing a woman\u2019s keening voice against teeth-rattling buzzsaw guitars, you realize these are still your Pixies, maybe older, a little grayer, a touch slower, but they\u2019re back. And if a few of the songs aren\u2019t quite on the same level as the highlights (\u201cPlaster of Paris,\u201d \u201cAll The Saints\u201d and \u201cTenement Song\u201d fall a bit short), the disc as a whole is exhilarating fun from one of the original greats.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":32863,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[6884],"rating":[5615],"class_list":["post-44636","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-pixies","rating-rating-b"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44636"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/44636\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=44636"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=44636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}