The truth is that we are never getting the old Pixies back. When the American indie rock band announced they would be releasing albums again after reuniting in the mid-2000s, fans were elated. Indie Cindy (2014), their first project since 1991, was a departure from the band’s established sound. They weren’t unrecognisable but required some adjustment. While the album wasn’t bad by any means, it seemed like it might take the band some time to settle into their new artistic direction.
Or perhaps that that this was a one-off experiment; that they would go back to business as usual on the next album.
Their efforts since then have shown this expectation to be misplaced. 2022’s Doggerel, their fourth studio album, in this post-reunion run was a truly wonderful piece of art. It played like the artistic culmination of everything their 21st century work had been pulling from; reflective, mid-tempo, wry, soulful and like the end of something.
With that in mind, one would have been forgiven for thinking that maybe, just maybe, their new album The Night the Zombies Came (released at the end of October 2024) would be the beginning of something old.
You would be forgiven, but you would be wrong.
“Maybe that’s not what people want to hear but, you know what? I can’t be 19 years old again. And the harder you try, the sillier it sounds,” the band’s frontman, Black Francis, said in an interview with the BBC.
This philosophy feels especially germane in this album. Over its forty-minute runtime it evokes competence; an air of certainty. These are life-long professionals and craftspeople. There are no false notes, even though this is new bassist’s Emma Richardson’s first album with the band after she replaced Paz Lenchantin earlier this year.
The album cannot be described as “sleepy”, only sleepier than their previous efforts. What it is is relaxed. In the best possible way, and in truth in a more coherent way than their previous relaxation-infused project Bossonova (1990). Where that album gave the impression of artists finding time to sit down in the middle of a march, The Night the Zombies Came feels like work made from a throne. So even the more energetic, catchier songs like “You’re So Impatient” translate better. Everything feels orchestrated.
It is likely some will call this work bland. However, the dynamic range within the work’s overall relaxed undercurrent rubbishes such an assertion. The previously mentioned “You’re So Impatient” and “Motoroller” are catchy, energetic tunes that will have listeners enthusiastically bobbing their heads without needing to take the roof car’s roof off. “Chicken” —a song about being a headless chicken— is as funny as it is perceptive and kind. “Oyster Beds” on the other hand is virtuoso punk performance; a song that demands constant relistening until one can sing along with every single bizarre beautiful lyric.
The production, along with the album arrangement, is pitch perfect. Producer Tom Delgety finds an equilibrium that platforms the best aspects of the current iteration of Pixies, their wit and soul, while discarding elements that would prove a drain. The result is an album that rolls slowly around the mattress with the listener.
Each song, the good and the very good alike, brings out the best in the track preceding and succeeding it in a display of nowadays uncommon elemental symbiosis.
Even the album’s cover art reflects this: gnarled yet stately imagery, multifaceted in its texture and a crisp new Pixies logo. It is very satisfying.
So, while the old Pixies that many initially fell in love with are gone, what we have now is a culmination of that previous effort. This album is art, and oftentimes art is about knowing when to stop.