Pixies - Beneath the Eyrie (2019)

It's a couple of years down the line and I'm still reeling from the Pixies having reformed without sounding like their own remember the eighties tribute act. I suppose it will eventually sink in, and Beneath the Eyrie may go some way towards dulling the novelty. It's nothing shocking, and it sounds like the Pixies, which in itself seems pretty special - at least compared to Indie Cindy which felt a little closer to a Pixies impersonation that didn't quite pan out.

The element that's different this time, the new thing brought to the table, or at least that I've only really noticed with Beneath the Eyrie, is how the Pixies really are a very traditional rock band. Of course, I knew this from the start, part of their appeal being in the contrast of the homespun with the weirder stuff. Here it seems particularly pronounced, although I still can't tell whether this is the record or simply something I've only just noticed. It's not that they're actually a marginally spikier Small Faces or anything so obvious. It isn't even the occasional instance of country twang or Tejano, or the boogie of St. Nazaire. Some of these songs, once you subtract the volume, wouldn't have been out of place Beatling away in Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. They remind us of what rock music is supposed to do, shimmering as though it's the first time we've heard it - and I mean rock music generally, not just this record.

It seems like one hell of a feat, using these ingredients to come up with something so breezy, so free of stodge, so unlike anything recorded by fat old cunts in mirror shades wishing they were smoking weed in seventies California; so I suppose that would be the customary teaspoon of weirdy supernatural piss and acid added for flavour, to throw everything into stark high definition contrast. It's like the Wire you can play to your dad without having him pull funny faces, or something. Beneath the Eyrie is yet another slab of genius routinely and apparently effortlessly turded out by one of the greatest rock bands of all time, all of which will probably sound like hyperbole, at least until you come to Silver Bullet at the end of side one.