The reunited Pixies, indie rock cult faves who influenced the likes of Nirvana and Radiohead, are on a big comeback roll
Glenn Gamboa
Staff Writer
The words are squonky-sweet, loud-soft-loud music to the ears of millions of fans of The Pixies.
"You know we're back together, right?" Pixies singer-guitarist Charles Thompson (aka Black Francis, aka solo artist Frank Black) sheepishly told the band's agent last month. That is followed by talk of a new album, and a new tour next year. In true Pixies form, the band is looking ahead just as it seems the music world has finally caught up to them.
The Pixies' 2004 success is a true music-industry surprise. The indie-rock cult favorites from Boston have never had a mainstream rock hit. They only have one gold album to their credit. They played their last show 12 years ago, before Thompson broke up the band with a fax to their manager. Yet, somehow in a year when Lollapalooza flamed out, Christina Aguilera and Lenny Kravitz canceled tours and other A-list acts pushed their shows into next year, The Pixies sold out concerts across the country.
Thompson, bassist-singer Kim Deal, guitarist Joey Santiago and drummer David Lovering plan to close out their triumphant comeback tour with an unprecedented eight concerts over seven nights at the 3,600-capacity Hammerstein Ballroom, starting Saturday night.
When the planets align
Some in The Pixies camp half-jokingly refer to this year as "The Miracle," a case of the planets aligning just-so to generate heat for a band that even at its previous peak had performed almost entirely out of the spotlight. William Morris Agency Senior Vice President Marc Geiger, who has booked Pixies tours for years, says that relative anonymity has now helped the band.
"Their music was always so good and so overlooked," Geiger says. "Their scarcity became their premium this year. The high-profile failures this summer had a lot to do with price and lack of value to consumers. The big disasters were due to overtouring. A lot of big stars thought they were bulletproof, and they were wrong. The Pixies definitely do not fall into that category. For The Pixies, their music has always been their currency."
Since Thompson and Santiago formed The Pixies in 1986, a band they jokingly hoped would be a mix of folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary and feedback-wielding punkers Hüsker Dü, their music has always defied classification. With the release of their 1987 debut EP, "Come on Pilgrim," and their groundbreaking "Surfer Rosa" album in 1988, The Pixies embodied the spirit of alternative rock at the time -- when bands and fans alike valued challenging, meaningful new music over formulas that had been heard before.
What The Pixies developed has since become a formula of its own. They helped perfect the loud-refrain, soft-chorus dynamic. (Nirvana's Kurt Cobain said that "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was his attempt at "ripping off The Pixies.") The interplay between the shrieking Thompson and the cooing Deal on songs such as "Debaser" from the band's standout album, "Doolittle," has also become part of several bands' repertoires.
For example, It is one of the dynamics that makes stellastarr*'s eponymous debut so exciting. Though stellastarr* singer Shawn Christensen says he and bassist Amanda Tannen don't purposely try to recreate the vocal styles of Thompson and Deal, he acknowledges that his love of The Pixies may have slipped into his band's music.
"I did really like the idea of Mandy doing some backing vocals and not harmonizing with me," Christensen says, taking a break from work on the band's upcoming CD, due out in late spring. "I don't really think I sound like Black Francis, but that's because I look at it from a personal angle. Other people catch some of those signs, and when people say The Pixies, we take it as a compliment."
After all, Christensen says, The Pixies held a great deal of influence over his music. "They were one of the reasons I wanted to be in a band in the first place," he says. "Before them, when I was in college, I would play Bob Dylan songs on my acoustic guitar. After them, I said, 'I want to play electric guitar now.' I really enjoyed the simplicity of their songs.
"Black Francis had a very dangerous sort of voice, and it would stop the songs from going too far into uplifting territory. They were walking that fine line for all their albums, I think, and they never went too far in either direction. I know they weren't really for everybody, but they were for me."
Props for their pop
Mark Thomas Kluepfel of the power-pop band Action Action, however, was drawn to the pop side of The Pixies. "They did pop songs that weren't typical pop songs," he says, which also describes his band's debut, "Don't Cut Your Fabric to This Year's Fashion."
"They're so dissonant, so ugly, at times, and that makes it so beautiful," Kluepfel says. "They were stripped down and raw. Black Francis really influenced me in the way I sing. He made it all right to be not perfect, to be carried away by raw emotion. I was always coming from the school where it has to be perfect, but after I heard 'Doolittle' I realized it was more important to develop an overall kind of feel."
Geiger says it is the testimonials from bands who have followed The Pixies that have also helped build the band's fan base, even though it was still dormant. "What Kurt Cobain said about The Pixies carried a great deal of weight," he says. "There was also David Bowie and PJ Harvey and so many others. The Pixies were always overlooked here, but in Europe it was very different."
Radiohead's Thom Yorke has said The Pixies changed his life. Ben Lee wrote a song about them. Bowie covered The Pixies' song "Cactus" on his "Heathen" album in 2002. Shortlist Music Prize winners TV on the Radio covered The Pixies' "Mister Grieves" on their debut EP.
Band leaders
Geiger says fans of those bands, as well as the little brothers and sisters of The Pixies' original fans, account for the massive growth of interest in the band. While most bands that reunite are lucky to see 90 percent of the audiences they had at their peak, The Pixies have seen their audience grow exponentially. The 28,000 or so fans who will see The Pixies in New York over the next week are about five times as many people who saw them on their pass through New York in 1992.
And the fans who see them now look at the experience differently, Geiger says. "Their repertoire isn't legendary," he says. "But now you see fans go crazy for 'Bone Machine' or 'Gouge Away.' You see 18-to-22-year-olds singing every single word of every song. What the whole audience wants is what was obscure. Because of the way the band broke up, most of these people never thought they would ever get the chance to see The Pixies. So now, if you care about credible music from the underground, you have to see The Pixies. You have to get that notch on your bedpost."
Geiger says The Pixies, especially Thompson, are taking their newfound success in stride, especially Thompson. "They are the most hardworking, low-key group of people you'll ever find," he says. "On his last solo tour, Charles drove his own van. He settled the show with the promoter. He humped around his own gear. That's why he's very careful how he talks about the hype surrounding this.
"He says, 'I'm still just in a rock band. The only difference between then and now is now I stay in nicer hotels.'"
Meet the Pixies
Glenn Gamboa
Staff Writer
In the 12 years after The Pixies called it quits, its members went out and forged their own careers before reuniting on their current tour.
Black Francis. After breaking up The Pixies, he changed his stage name to Frank Black and pumped out 10 solo albums between 1993 and 2003. Though the early ones were mostly successful, with 1993's "Frank Black" providing his cover of The Beach Boys' "Hang on to Your Ego" and 1994's "Teenager of the Year" providing the minor hit "Headache," Black continued to experiment and offer up his interesting musical ideas on his later works. This year, he released "Frank Black Francis," a collection of Pixies demos and some reworking of Pixies songs with British experimental pop band The Pale Boys.
Kim Deal. The most successful of the post-Pixies. In 1990, Deal formed The Breeders with Tanya Donelly of Throwing Muses, as a side project, releasing the well-received album "Pod." When The Pixies disbanded, Deal focused on The Breeders. Donelly left to form Belly after the first album, Deal returned home to Dayton, Ohio, and enlisted her sister, Kelley, to work on "Last Splash" in 1993. The album became bigger than any Pixies disc, thanks to the rollicking hits "Cannonball" and "Divine Hammer," while "Do You Love Me Now?" and "Saints" showed The Breeders could be deep as well. The Breeders' success took the Deals by surprise, and they decided they needed a break. In 1995, Deal teamed up with Breeders' drummer Jim MacPherson and some other Dayton musicians to form the rough-and-tumble side project The Amps, which released "Pacer." In 2002, The Breeders reformed to release "Title TK."
Joey Santiago. Occasionally playing in Black's band, he worked mostly on movie and TV scores, including the Fox series "Undeclared." He also collaborated with his wife, singer Linda Mallari, in the rock band The Martinis, which released a debut album, "Smitten," this year.
David Lovering. He became a professional magician.
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