‘Indie Cindy’ is an album that most music fans, if they’re being honest, never thought they’d hold in their hands. Pixies, that most volatile of bands, have been back together for a decade but, until last summer, new music wasn’t really on the agenda.
Then, just as Kim Deal took her leave, that changed with the surprise release of Bagboy, a brilliant single and a headache for those still coming to terms with the exit of a certain bass-wielding icon.
‘Indie Cindy’ collects that song and the three EPs that followed into one package, fleshing out a true image of the band as they are today, 23 years removed from ‘Trompe Le Monde’.
Its pace is largely sedate, its more angular moments tempered by great slices of pop melody. There’s none of the visceral excitement that accompanied Black Francis’s every trip to the microphone in the late ‘80s, but there is a sense of natural progression.
The band’s first albums, created at lightning speed amid disintegrating personal relationships, were never going to be equalled here. They were unique to their surroundings and truly original; nobody had ever sounded like Pixies before. Many have tried since, and failed.
Francis, Joey Santiago and David Lovering now sound almost exactly how you imagined Pixies would when pushing 50, their desire to do the unexpected tempered by age and the very fact that all their best moves have been copied so often as to render them cliché.
The title track, the spacey, Bowie-indebted Andro Queen, Greens and Blues, with its easy gait, and Blue Eyed Hexe all tip their hat to the past but retain a modern sheen - courtesy of another face from the old days, Gil Norton - as something of a buffer.
There is, it has to be said, a Kim Deal-shaped hole at this record’s heart. The backing vocals on Bagboy - tantalisingly close to her own - are nothing more than a cruel tease, a glimpse of what might have been. Deal’s interaction with Francis, and the way that their vocals worked perfectly together even if they never really existed in harmony in the real world, is sorely missed.
Still, ‘Indie Cindy’ is a portrait of a band comfortable in their own skin, capable of writing alt-rock songs that knock spots off their imitators while still chugging in third gear. Pixies aren’t out to rough up the established order anymore - they exist as part of the fabric.
Pixies Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:
Sun June 08 2014 - LONDON Victoria Park
Mon June 30 2014 - CORK Live At Marquee
Wed July 09 2014 - ST AUSTELL Eden Project
Thu July 10 2014 - MANCHESTER Castlefield Bowl
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