Indie Cindy collects songs from their recent three EPs and does contain tracks of merit. Titled Indie Cindy, the record collects material from three EPs released over the past few months, two of which we've already reviewed. But part of what made the Pixies interesting is that they always seemed to possess some unquantifiable danger, which they no longer do. Early on, Francis—a comic-book kid raised in an evangelical church—talked about the band’s music with all the pretense of someone fixing toilets or laying shingle. The band is also learning how to make change work in their favor. Though none of the group’s original albums have been reissued recently, they have never been reviewed by Pitchfork. It at least offers the group a chance to mix it up a bit after years of bleeding the same old Doolittle staples dry. This is outlaw music, sharpened by conspiracy theory and too much time with too little human contact. Ben Sisario of The New York Times called it "less screamy and uptight" but noted the overall dynamics of the band were still present. Doolittle is the second studio album by the American alternative rock band Pixies, released in April 1989 on 4AD.The album's offbeat and dark subject material, featuring references to surrealism, Biblical violence, torture and death, contrasts with the clean production sound achieved by the newly hired producer Gil Norton. In March 1987, the band went into a warehouse studio called Fort Apache and worked for three days straight, producing 18 songs. Head Carrier is the sixth studio album by the American alternative rock band the Pixies, released on September 30, 2016 on Pixiesmusic and PIAS.Produced by Tom Dalgety, and recorded at RAK Studios in London, the album is the first to feature bass guitarist Paz Lenchantin, who joined the band in 2014 to tour in support of its previous album, Indie Cindy. The romping “Graveyard Hill” (one of several tracks co-written by Lenchantin, an eager presence throughout the album) sets up Black Francis for some of the freest, most feral barks he’s unleashed in two decades. It’s true what they say about the desert when they say it looks like the moon. The Pixies have finally made an album that scratches the itch for new Pixies music. Titled Indie Cindy, the record collects material from three EPs released over the past few months. They seem like a really pretty good alt-rock band, better than the vast majority of the competition Read Review. Pixies – Indie Cindy Posted by Paul Page on Apr 10, 2014 in Album Review , Indie/Alternative | 0 comments It’s been an interesting nine months for Boston indie legends Pixies . They gave them 1-star (out of 10). The lyric 'Indie Cindy' implies some kind of cheapness to the independent '80s sound Pixies helped to define. There are moments where, if you zone out just a little bit, it feels like you’re listening to some Bossanova B-sides that you somehow missed. It’s weird that “better than nothing” became the bar for what was once one of the most celebrated bands of their era, but if it’s a choice between more records as solid, if unspectacular, as Beneath the Eyrie or nothing, the Pixies might as well keep them coming. Information on Pixies. The other songs from the Fort Apache sessions—which came to be called “The Purple Tape”—ended up scattered throughout the Pixies catalog, also in stronger versions. Bossanova is sweeter than Trompe, but its sweetness exists at an impossible distance. “You’ve stolen my tomorrow/So I come for it today/You stole it when you stole my yesterday,” he sings in a smoldering, Leonard Cohen growl. A kind of concept album emerges, especially toward the album’s end: a song about the geography of Mars followed by a song about a burnout named Jefrey—“with one f”—sitting on a carpet with a tabla, thinking about outer space, followed by Francis staring into the sun, a gesture made out of the desperation to find new answers. For however classically far out the Pixies got toward the end, they had also never sounded so grounded. Instead of feigning the mystique that now eludes him, he leans into candor, touching on his recent divorce in unguarded terms, at least on the tracks where he isn’t singing about witches or mythical half-human sea creatures. Indie Cindy by Pixies album reviews & Metacritic score: The first full-length studio release for the alternative rock band since 1991's Trompe Le Monde was produced by Gil Norton. Francis’ allusions to Catholicism turned into overt talk about UFOs, which makes sense when you remember that religion has always just been a way to explain the lights in the sky. It's loud, it's dynamic, it stops and starts - as before, there are clear nods to what has been, but at the same time as conjuring something else. It just so bland and all the aggressive which made the Pixies stand out is now gone on Indie Cindy and it just feels like stripped back various forms of rock genres which just … The music is a slow dance between celestial bodies, heavenly but melancholic. Francis went on to make several solo records as Frank Black, one of which is called Teenager of the Year and is the sound of a creative person relinquishing himself of the pressures of being in a famous band and appreciating the practice of not giving a damn. Pixies – ‘Beneath The Eyrie’ review Arguably their greatest work in 28 years, this otherworldly album filters present-day tribulations through the band's witchy, psychedelic prism 4 Three middle-aged guys seeing what happens when they get back on the horse and try again, they now sound most comfortable when they're being laid-back, “Greens and Blues” and the chorus of “Indie Cindy” especially. Released 28 April 2014 on Pixiesmusic (catalog no. In general they remain solid evidence for the theory that the darkest and most violent thinking is done by the quiet kids next door. The Pixies recorded Beneath the Eyrie at a creepy old church, which must have helped juice the gothic sound that they’re going for. By Trompe Le Monde the band had transitioned from seeming like quiet people who liked violent movies to violent people who didn’t make much time for movies at all. Pixies to Release First New Album Since 1991, and It's Called Indie Cindy ... Indie Cindy is comprised of the ... Pitchfork may earn a portion of sales from products that … In the interest of avoiding redundancy with another standalone review of this material, we’ve instead chosen to explore the band’s back catalog. Their biggest crossover single, “Here Comes Your Man,” is less tied to European dada than the rustic imagery of a pulp paperback: The boxcar, the nowhere plains, the big stone and the broken crown. Bossanova and Trompe Le Monde make sense to me here, when it’s 110 degrees by lunch and the concrete ripples in the heat. The great anecdote about the Pixies is that they formed when a college dropout going by the name Black Francis put out an ad for a female bass player who liked both the punk band Hüsker Dü and the folk trio Peter, Paul, and Mary. If you have to, just pretend it's the new project of Frank Black, Joey Santiago and David Loverling. Interested newcomers to the band: Listen to the Pixies chronologically. One may almost interpret this weird love-song as a plea from Francis to be given a kind of immunity from the pejorative as a version of his esteemed crew returns to the fold. The Pixies … He sounds new but seems to come from an old place, like an obscure bog predator with alien-looking adaptations. He sounds like a snotty kid telling his Dad off. The Pixies have now been reunited for four years longer than they were around to begin with, but are just getting around to releasing a new album, which they have called Indie Cindy. Amusing as they are, the spy-rock rave-up “St. The album’s lows aren’t so much bad as routine. Pitchfork is the most trusted voice in music. On a Surfer Rosa song called “Cactus,” he begs a woman to cut herself up on a cactus and send him the bloody dress in the mail. Trompe is more aggressive than anything in their catalog but also more confident. “The Long Rider,” meanwhile, is the album’s big earworm, and prime radio fodder on the off chance alternative stations decide a new Pixies single might be something they’re into. Indie Cindy is certainly not as derisively and indefensibly embarrassing as the Pitchfork review of the first two EPs that comprise two thirds of this record would have you … Give Indie Cindy an honest listen. Like Devo or Pere Ubu before them, they were an art-rock band steeped in the 1950s and early ’60s, a period of music before rock was considered art. It’s no coincidence that Indie Cindy is at its best when Joey Santiago cuts loose with his guitar Read Review It may be the most vulnerable line Francis ever wrote. The sinister spark, the mischief, that giddy confusion they stirred with their blur of candy and sadism—it was totally absent, replaced by an at best anonymous, at worst obnoxious shrug of secondhand tics. Its songs take aim at the big things important art is sometimes supposed to: good and evil, environmental ruin, Bible stories, death. It’s in Doolittle's margins—the faux-hillbilly cackling of “Mr. Probably not Pixies fans who used up their goodwill on Indie Cindy, but it’s not modern or catchy enough for any era of alt-radio. 6.0 | FasterLouder. At least things couldn’t get any worse. We can always depend on Boston for more sports and software engineers. It didn’t buy them back much goodwill, but 2016’s Head Carrier was perfectly fine, a serviceable effort roughly on par with the average Frank Black album. Having new material to perform doesn’t hurt, either. He still howls and screams, but had also developed a new voice, a flat, posthuman kind of monotone. The blustery opener “Arms of Mrs. Mark of Cain” and the naked “Ready for Love” cast him as heartbroken and cursed, picking up where his confessional final effort with the Catholics, Show Me Your Tears, left off. Forgetting everyone.” Later, on “Havalina,” he spots a javelina—an ornery, boar-like animal not uncommon here—walking across a plain. About four years ago I moved from New York to Arizona and found myself listening to the the band's last two albums—1990's Bossanova and 1991’s Trompe Le Monde—a lot. While not as egregiously baffling as Indie Cindy, the latest from the ’90s indie icons is nonetheless a middling effort missing all kinds of dynamics the Pixies used to offer. “What Goes Boom,” “Greens and Blues,” “Indie Cindy”: these are slick songs, a little overextended and puffed up, intimidated by the band’s legacy but charming in their own way. Then return to Trompe Le Monde and you can hear how angry Francis had become. Complete your Pixies collection.