Nov
30
“Each age, it is found, must write its own books; or rather, each generation for the next succeeding. The books of an older period will not fit this.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
“You think I’m dead but I sail away on a wave of mutilation.”
—Pixies, “Wave of Mutilation”
Black Francis of the Pixies during the Doolittle tour, Chicago, 2009. Photograph by Charlie Clark.
Are the Pixies old, or is the story of their music just beginning?
I found myself pondering this question during last night’s sold-out concert at Hammerstein Ballroom, in New York City, which doubled as a 20th-anniversary celebration of the band’s indispensable album Doolittle. The Pixies played the album front-to-back, framing it with a few B-sides—some “so obscure we had to learn them”—and then capping the night with an encore of favorites from other albums.
But back to the question.
Physically, the band’s members are more honest than most rock musicians about the passage of time and all of its crimes: all three male members are bald or nearly so, and the female member, Kim Deal, appears to have assumed the shape of an R. Crumb fantasy object. But none has lost a step when it comes to performing: David Lovering still bangs out beats with the precision of a German-made appliance; Joey Santiago still knows how to kindle a heartbreaking solo from the spark of a single bent note; Kim Deal still offsets her loping, liquid bass tones with ethereal vocal leads and harmonies; and Black Francis remains a voice-box virtuoso, producing previously unheard sounds through an alchemy of shrieks, guttural whispers, and metallic tunefulness.
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