Sorry ’90s Fans, But The Pixies Reuniting Was The Best Thing They Ever Did
Kim Deal may have gone, but Pixies are creating some of the best work of their career.
In April of 2004, the Pixies stood on stage together and played for the first time in almost 12 years.
They would spend the rest of the year on tour, grossing millions and selling out every venue you could think of. It was a moment fans never saw coming — and, for whatever reason, the surrealist nature of watching the Pixies play live in the 21st century has never worn off.
This year marks 15 years since the Pixies reunited, which means they have now been back together for over twice as long as they were originally a band.
Of course, it hasn’t entirely been a honeymoon period — particularly when the band began to push out new material from 2013 onwards, timed with the departure of founding member Kim Deal. The collective mood towards the band soured significantly, leading many to rue them ever reforming in the first place.
However, with the release of seventh album Beneath the Eyrie and a huge national tour set for March, today we’re going to look at the new era of the Pixies — and why, ultimately, their continuation was the smartest thing they ever did.
Kim Deal with Pixies, in younger days.
All Over The World
In the period between the Pixies’ split in 1993 and their reunion in 2004, the members each found new ways to keep themselves occupied. Black Francis — now Frank Black — made a string of underrated solo albums. Kim Deal forged ahead in earnest with The Breeders, creating a decade-best classic in Last Splash along the way. Drummer David Lovering even found himself with some unique new hobbies, including metal detecting and becoming a show magician.
That decade and change, however, also saw another significant shift: Pixies went from being cult figures to the stuff of legend. Their music seeped into pop culture. Bands openly expressed their love and admiration for their work.
A new generation, too young to have experienced the band within their first lifetime, were coming to the band with fresh eyes and a newfound sense of perspective on their legacy. The 1997 best-of Death to the Pixies confirmed this, reaching the top 20 in the UK and spawning a t-shirt that remains one of their best-sellers to this very day.
By the time Black Francis had started rumours that the Pixies were getting back together (true story), their status had ballooned well beyond what was cemented upon their early-90s implosion. The subsequent reunion tour was met with instantly sold-out shows in the kind of venues the band could have only ever dreamed of in its original run. This, in turn, brings us to a twofold point. The Pixies reunion meant a whole new swathe of people finally got the chance to see them live — and what’s more, from all reports, they were killing it at every single show.
Throughout the 2000s, the Pixies remained a surefire festival headliner, a confident arena-filler and an alt-rock beacon for both those that believed in them the first time around and those that came to them in this second iteration. In the end, though, it was the classic inner-band tension that gave way to what most perceived as the beginning of the end.
Wave Of Mutilation
In 2013, Kim Deal quit the Pixies once and for all. After the band set up to begin work on their first new album in some 20 years, the erstwhile bassist packed her things and left a matter of days in.
“Despite her decision to move on, we will always consider her a member of the Pixies, and her place will always be here for her,” the band wrote in a statement. “We wish her all the best.”
Deal herself has barely spoken on the matter in the six years since quitting, but the fans immediately let their voices be heard in the ensuing weeks. It was here a mantra was formed, seemingly in retaliation to the band’s decision to continue on: “No Kim, No Deal.”
Was this all purely bad coincidence? Were they desperately trying to fill the void left behind?
So vital was the classic line-up remaining in-tact, the same people who had flocked to see them for nearly a decade at this point had immediately turned on their heroes. Admittedly, the band didn’t handle things very well in the following months: They released a widely-panned (and controversial) single, ‘Bagboy,’ which featured an imitation of Kim’s backing vocals in its chorus (care of a male vocalist, Jeremy Dubs). If that wasn’t enough, they replaced Deal with another female bassist named Kim — the late Kim Shattuck, also of The Muffs and a dozen other bands.
Was this all purely bad coincidence? Were they desperately trying to fill the void left behind? It’s all conjecture at this point, so there’s not a great deal (ahem) that can be said on the issue that doesn’t boil down to speculation. What’s easy to see, however, is this was a difficult adjustment period for the band — and both their subsequent EPs and end-result studio album, Indie Cindy, suffered as a result of it. Truthfully, the album isn’t nearly as bad as most remember it to be — ‘Snakes’ channels a darker alt-rock energy, and ‘Bagboy’ eventually turned into a fascination purely on account of how weird it was. Living in the shadow of records like Surfer Rosa and Bossanova, however, Indie Cindy was always going to suffer.
By the end of 2014, Shattuck abruptly departed the band. (In subsequent interviews, she revealed the split was less than amicable, having been kicked out of the band over the phone.) She was ultimately replaced by Paz Lenchantin; having served as a fixture of supergroups like A Perfect Circle and Zwan around the turn of the century, Lenchantin knew her way around difficult rockstars – and, besides everything else, was both a phenomenal musician and a true fan of the band. It was with Lenchantin on board that Pixies 2.0 was truly able to begin.
La La Love You
Towards the end of Deal’s run with the Pixies, many noted the icy tension on-stage resulting in performances that felt phoned-in rather than earnest homages to the band’s classic albums. Beyond the schism, however, things have changed a lot. Bringing in Lenchantin has given the Pixies a whole new energy when they’re on-stage together, relishing the fact they still get the chance to play massive rooms and have fun whilst doing it.
Deal, meanwhile, reunited with the classic line-up of The Breeders — the one responsible for the aforementioned Last Splash — and went on to give some of the most acclaimed performances of the band’s career. They even turned in a new album of their own last year, entitled All Nerve, which sported some killer singles and even a cameo from our very own Courtney Barnett. In other words, both sides are happy — and that can only be a good thing for all involved.
Pixies are creating without concerning themselves with the looming legacy over their heads. They’re creating with nothing to prove.
In 2019, the Pixies are as creative as they’ve ever been. They’ve released two further albums with Lenchantin — Head Carrier back in 2016 and Beneath the Eyrie a matter of months ago. The entire recording process of the latter was documented in the fascinating It’s a Pixies Podcast, which gives you an incredible insight into the way that the band works. Across both albums are some career-best songs: The snarling, rollicking ‘Baal’s Back’ and ‘Um Chagga Lagga,’ not to mention the loving ode to Deal ‘All I Think About Now,’ the propulsive post-punk throwback ‘On Graveyard Hill’ and the unbelievably catchy ‘Catfish Kate.’
Will these ever garner the same love and respect as a ‘Here Comes Your Man’ or a ‘Where is My Mind?’ No. Then again, they don’t have to: It’s clear now that the Pixies are creating without concerning themselves with the looming legacy over their heads. They’re creating with nothing to prove, and in their own way that’s entirely liberating.
Of course, there’s always a risk when classic bands attempt to update their otherwise spotless discographies. Some of the most panned albums of the last 15 years have been released by reunited bands, from The Stooges’ comeback The Weirdness to Jane’s Addiction fumbling the ball on 2011’s confusing The Great Escape Artist. So, why is it so different with the Pixies? Why was getting back together the smartest move they ever made?
Really, it comes down to the fact that the Pixies were never the type of band to settle or rest on any sort of laurels. They were always defiant, hostile and unpredictable. They called the shots as they saw fit, and a few bouts of nostalgia in their second run don’t cancel out the original mentality of the group. Why should they sit idly by? By remaining a contemporary band, the Pixies don’t get to just look fondly back on their glory days — they get to relive them every night in real time, while simultaneously making a few more of their own.
They — and by extension, their fans — have access to the band’s entire history at the tip of their fingers. They’re not a museum, however. They’re a living, breathing exhibit — and they’re a fucking loud one, too.
Anyone who’s seen the Pixies the last two times they’ve been here — the stint at the Opera House in 2014 or their national Head Carrier tour in 2017 — know that they’ve still got what it takes to wow an inter-generational audience. They’re sharing the stage with bands that wouldn’t exist were it not for them — they co-headlined a North American run with Weezer earlier in the year, for instance, while also touring along UK post-grunge band Basement and the inimitable TV On The Radio (who, not for nothing, do a killer version of ‘Mr. Grieves.’)
On paper, all three of these bands couldn’t be more different. In the centre of the barely-touching circles that is their Venn diagram, however, is the Pixies. You could do this with a solid combination of just about any three bands working within the wider spectrum of alternative rock today. Hell, it even stretches down to here at home – after all, one of the most popular Like A Versions of the year was Skegss taking on ‘Here Comes Your Man.’
That’s the power of the Pixies and their music — and it’s more than fair to argue that none of that would be happening in 2019 had the band not decided to reassemble 15 years ago. Their 50,000 watts of good-will are yet to dim.
David James Young is a writer, podcaster and debaser. You can catch him slicin’ up eyeballs over at www.davidjamesyoung.com.
Just Hear Me Out is a semi-regular column on Junkee and Punkee in which writers air their most deeply held opinions. Read more of them here.