Pixies in Kansas City, 2004

Source: http://flickr.com/photos/strph/5848893/

THE RETURN OF THE PIXIES?

Here comes your band. Again. The Pixies, one of the most original bands of the last 25 years, will return to release new songs next September, almost 15 years after releasing their last album, “Trompe le Monde”.

After the band dissolved in 1993, each member initiated an interesting individual career, but without reaching their previous success. The singer and alma mater of the band, the brilliant, histrionic, unmatchable and UFOphilic Black Francis changed his stage name for Frank Black and released a series of albums with unequal fortune. Bass player Kim Deal – whose artistic relationship with Francis was quite problematic to say the very least- achieved a remarkable success with the Breeders and their hit “Cannonball”. Fabulous guitarist Joey Santiago followed with his rage in The Martinis, and drummer David Lovering almost disappear from the musical scene.

In 2003, Black Francis a.ka.a. Frank Black continued to proclaim that the band would “never” return. But the following year the four members seemed to iron out their differences (especially Mr. Black and Mrs. Deal) and began a series of concerts, always playing themes from their old albums. I had occasion to attend two of those concerts in Europe, and I can testify that they have not lost a single gram of his force. The sound more demential, histrionic and “alternative” than any of those young indie bands admired nowadays.

However, as a Pixies fan, this announcement paradoxically worries me: Come on pilgrim, Surfer Rosa, Doolittle, Bossanova, Trompe le Mond… these are the original five albums by the Pixies, five albums that could easily rank among the 100 most important albums of the last decades. Will the new themes be worthy of these fantastic masterpieces, or, on the contrary, we will attend to the frustrated return of a band with nothing new to offer? I apologize for my scepticism, but I am one of those who think that Michael Jordan should have retired after doing that shot against the Jazz…

Nothing would make me happier than being wrong in my fears. Nothing. And I hope that soon we could be taking the motorway to Rosswell, levitating like a dreaming bird among the Olympus Mount. In September we will return to the Planet of the Sound. And there we will see what is waiting for us.