Head Carrier, the brand new album by cult icons Pixies, is released on 30th September. But is it actually any good? Tim Russell presents the case for the prosecution, while Loz Etheridge defends their sixth album. Let the debate begin!
Tim Russell: “Can you turn it off? You must never listen to this. I think you should not keep it. You should destroy it.” Werner Herzog’s advice to the mother of Grizzly Man Timothy Treadwell, after hearing the tape recording of the moment her son is killed by a bear, sprung immediately to mind during my first listen to Head Carrier. Listening to something you love being brutally murdered is an experience no one should have to endure.
Loz Etheridge: A bit harsh? I mean, people were queuing up to maul Indie Cindy when it came out, but all the media outlets that panned it suddenly decided that it should be in their 50 best albums of the year by the time they ran their lists at Christmas…
Tim: I say this as someone, perhaps the only someone, who liked Indie Cindy. OK, you can stop laughing, pointing and throwing stuff. It wasn’t that bad. It had at least two songs – ‘Blue Eyed Hexe’ and ‘Greens & Blues’ – that made it onto my Best of the Pixies playlist. It sounded exactly like you’d expect a Pixies album in 2013 to sound: older, wiser, still a bit wild in places, but happy in its ageing skin, comfortable in the knowledge that it was no longer the feral beast of 1989. And even if you did hate it, its existence shouldn’t in any way invalidate your love of Surfer Rosa or Doolittle.
Loz: We are in agreement on that point, at least.
Tim: Head Carrier is different though. It’s horrible. It sounds like a bunch of 50-somethings trying, desperately and tragically, to sound like 20-somethings. After repeated exposure to its myriad atrocities, I never ever want to hear Frank Black’s fucking voice again, even if it means never hearing ‘River Euphrates‘, ‘No13 Baby‘ or ‘Motorway to Roswell‘ again for the rest of my life. It reminds me of the way one-time Pixies influence Salvador Dali would, in his later years, sign blank canvases and allow aspiring young artists to paint Dali copies onto them: basically, it sounds like a tribute band trying, and failing, to be Pixies.
Loz: See, this is where I take issue. Most of the battering that Indie Cindy took was based around the fact that it “sounded too much like a Frank Black solo album and not enough like Pixies.” It sounds to me like the band have taken heed of this element and revisited their former glories in an effort to remind themselves what made them great in the first place. Unlike you though, I think they’ve done it fantastically well. I’ve been playing Head Carrier in the car over and over. I love it. The title track – simply a rediscovery of that classic Pixies sound as far as I’m concerned. It would have slotted onto Bossanova at least, with barely the blink of an eye. I honestly think it’s the best thing they’ve put out since Doolittle.
Tim: But much of Head Carrier is lazy, half-arsed filler, the kind of stuff you skipped past on all those countless, bloated Frank Black solo albums! Quite how the unremarkable likes of that title track (“I’m going down the drain again” – you’re not wrong there Frank), ‘Might As Well Be Gone,’ ‘Tenement Song,’ ‘Bel Esprit’ et al ever made it beyond the demo stage and into the repertoire of this once special, extraordinary band is a riddle only the band’s accountant can probably explain.
Loz: Ha. I was singing along to those ones after little more than a couple of listens. I’m not going to pretend they hold the same level of excitement as, say, ‘Crackity Jones‘ or ‘I’ve Been Tired,’ but then, I wouldn’t expect them to. Nobody in their fifties is the same person they were in their early twenties, so I can forgive the more modest melodies that I am guessing you have interpreted as “mediocre?”
Tim: Yes, but mediocrity isn’t even Head Carrier’s worst crime. That would be a clutch of songs in which this band, these frauds pretending to be Pixies, try and recreate past glories. So ‘Baal’s Back’ does the screaming thing a la ‘Something Against You,’ ‘Tame’ or ‘Rock Music,’ but where back then Black sounded like some primal force of nature, these days he audibly doesn’t give one single shit about his art and ends up grunting like a constipated Brian Johnson, and I am not one of those bizarre people who like to pretend that AC/DC were ever any good.
Loz: I wish I could deny the Brian Johnson thing, but I’m struggling to pretend it doesn’t sound like him, I’ll grant you that much… Still, it’s a fun song to listen to after a shitty day at work. Like the earlier songs you mentioned, it kind of acts as a “musical punchbag.” You feel much better after listening to that. Well, maybe you don’t, but I do.
Tim: ‘All I Think About Now’ shamelessly begins with the riff from ‘Where Is My Mind?’ before bassist Paz Lenchantin has a valiant but doomed stab at aping Kim Deal’s vocal turn on ‘Gigantic,’ an exercise that only serves to remind us how great Kim Deal is and how there’s now a massive Kim Deal-shaped hole at the heart of the band. And worst, most cringeworthy of all, is ‘Talent,’ which combines the worst lyrics of Pixies’ career (“I met a real cool dude today, looking like Jack Palance”) with a lazy arrangement from their well-worn quiet-LOUD-quiet template to utterly embarrassing effect.
Loz: Pixies’ lyrics always had a kind of innocent charm about them though, didn’t they? Sometimes they bordered on twee. I mean, come on, even Doolittle featured the lyrics “All I’m saying pretty baby, la la love you, don’t mean maybe.” It’s not exactly a new thing for them. I actually like ‘Talent,’ especially when he does the shoulder shrugging “I don’t know” thing. It seems a very Pixies thing to do. I can’t help thinking that, despite your reservations, this one could become a firm live favourite. What’s your final verdict then?
Tim: The overall effect of Head Carrier is like a girl you once loved and never really got over suddenly reappearing in your life, only to take a shit through your letterbox and kill your dog, leaving you wondering if she was ever that special in the first place and whether you’ve wasted the last 25 years pining for her. You must never listen to this. You should destroy it.
Loz: You fucking die.
Bill: What?
Loz: No, no, I was talking to Tim. I said you fucking die! [Well, ok, I admit, the last part of the conversation there didn’t actually take place, but obviously, Tim and I hold drastically different views on the matter of whether Head Carrier is, indeed, any good or not, and I thought the fictional end to the conversation may please – or at least appease – trainspotter Pixies fans after Tim’s outright mauling of the new album.
For the record, I would have rated it 8/10, perhaps even bordering on a 9. Tim, on the other hand, was reluctant to give it any points at all…]
Tim: You are the son of a motherfucker! 1-2-3-4… [In my defence, I gave the album 0/10 as I simply cannot find one redeeming feature in it. But you know what my biggest disappointment with Head Carrier is? In a year when several of Pixies’ early 90s alt-rock peers – Suede, Dinosaur Jr, Radiohead, Nick Cave, PJ Harvey – have all released absolutely brilliant albums, albums that show how each artist (with the exception of Dinosaur Jr, who no-one wants to change) has evolved over the last 20 years or so, I was hoping Pixies might do the same and give us a late-period masterpiece, their own Night Thoughts or Skeleton Tree. Instead, they’ve made a Pixies karaoke album.]
Loz: Well, we’ll agree to differ, I think! Anyway, who cares what we think? Have a listen to the new tracks and let us know your own verdict.
Pixies release Head Carrier on 30th September through Pixies Music.
