Pixies singer Black Francis on the band’s need to carry on and the new album

WHEN Pixies’ beloved bassist left, the band faced the end. However, singer Black Francis felt they should continue as long as they delivered.

By James WigneyHit Editor

5 min read

September 1, 2016 - 6:00AM

News Corp Australia Network

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THERE was a moment during the recording of the last Pixies album that singer Black Francis thought the band he started 30 years ago was done for good.

The seminal US alt rock band, which heavily influenced the likes of Nirvana, Blur and Radiohead, had convened in the famous Rockfield studios in Wales to record their first album in more than 20 years, 2014’s Indie Cindy, when bassist Kim Deal announced she was leaving.

Francis (born Charles Thompson IV), guitarist Joey Santiago and drummer David Lovering pondered the future of a band that already had a famously fractious history, having smashed out four revered albums in as many years before intraband tension — particularly between Deal and Francis — led to a hiatus that had lasted more than a decade.

But Francis couldn’t shake the feeling that the band still had new music that needed to be made and that they needed to “earn it” again. When Pixies re-formed in 2004 after pursuing solo and side projects, their shows were rapturously received and when the tour offers kept coming they ended up spending best part of a decade reliving past glories.

They played a greatest hits set on their first Australian tour in 2007 and returned three years later as part of a world tour during which they played their 1989 masterpiece Doolittle in full.

PIXIES TO TOUR AUSTRALIA IN MARCH 2017

Black Francis and Kim Deal at the Palace, St Kilda, on Pixies’ first tour of Australia in 2007. Picture: News Corp Australia

“I suppose that right when she left, in those first few days of us processing that, we were like ‘wow — maybe this is all over, maybe we should walk away?’,” admits Francis.

“But we got over that pretty quickly. That’s not any criticism of Kim Deal. It’s more that we are still feeling the magic of music. And there we were — in a studio in Wales going ‘here’s the piano where Bohemian Rhapsody was written’ and thinking that whatever fate has left me here at this particular junction and what I am I going to do with it? Am I going to run away or hold my ground and be who I am? And that’s what we did and that’s what we are doing.”

Francis has since described Indie Cindy, which was in fact three EPs strung together and received a mixed reaction from fans and critics, as a transitional album at the time and still holds to that view.

“We never expected people to unanimously rally around it, especially given the upset of Kim Deal leaving the group,” he says. “It was already kind of marked if you will, in some way. I suppose there are things I wish could have been different about it but they were things that I wish could have been different about it at the time when I was making it. It’s not like it was lost on me — I got it.”

So when the time came to record the follow-up, Head Carrier, the band decided a different approach was needed. Guitarist Santiago says the band needed the new alum to be “a punch in the face”. Not only did they set aside more time to workshop and craft the songs than they had for any album since Doolittle, they also put aside their long-term producer Gil Norton in favour of Tom Dalgety, who had worked on Royal Blood’s killer debut as well as with Killing Joke and the recently defunct The Maccabees.

Pixies at the Sydney Opera House for the 2014 Vivid' festival. (From left) Paz Lenchantin, Joey Santiago, Black Francis and David Lovering. Picture: Jane Dempster

“That was something we decided we had to do,” says Francis. “It started to feel that if we were to continue to work with Gil we were being too much like nervous Nellies or something. And that we weren’t brave enough to work with another producer. We had to kind of prove to ourselves and whoever else that we have flexibility and we are not complete nincompoops.”

Playing bass on the new album, which is released September 30, is Paz Lechantin, who had been touring with the live band since 2104. As the replacement for the integral and beloved Deal, the newcomer wanted to tackle head-on the elephant in the room, and asked Francis to co-write All I Think About Is Now as a kind of thank you to her predecessor. Lechantin presented the chords and Francis wrote the lyrics, which include the line “Remember when we were happy?/If I’m late can I thank you now?”.

“It was Paz’s idea and she sort of surprised me with that suggestion but I didn’t hesitate and I accepted her challenge,” says Francis. “I certainly understood the poignancy of it — it wasn’t like it felt wrong or weird it was more a case of ‘wow, we’re going to get right into the psychology of the Pixies here’. But to Paz’s credit, it was perfect, especially as I was asking Paz to sing it and she is the new female voice of the band so I think Paz very astutely said ‘we need to acknowledge something here in some way’ and so we did.”

Paz Lenchantin, David Lovering, Joey Santiago, Black Francis and, er, wolf. Picture: Supplied

In typical oblique Pixies style (Francis was after all responsible for the one of the greatest rhymes in rock when he paired “crustacean” with “mutilation”) Head Carrier takes its title from St Denis, the patron saint of Paris and famous cephalophore. According to legend he was martyred by decapitation and then carried his severed head for 10km from Montmatre, preaching all the while, before he dropped dead at the River Seine. It’s vintage Pixes, grotesque and drenched in religious imagery, and discovered by Francis as he followed a rabbit hole of research that also led to another song on the album, Plaster Of Paris.

“It’s like some of the most amazing surrealist, horror-zombie movie,” Francis says with a chuckle. “How could you not write about that? So I figured I’m definitely going to write in this Head Carrier guy somewhere on this record. When you are given something that choice you’re like ‘Oh my God, my whole record is going to be about St Denis’. It didn’t work out that way, but in that moment, it was such a jewel that it was going to be my rock opera about St Denis.”

The new line-up of Pixies will return to Australia next year on its first proper tour for six years (they played the Vivid festival in Sydney two years ago) and Francis says the set list it still up in the air but he’s grateful to have plenty of new material to work with.

“It’s sort of up to the audience. We don’t pander totally to the crowd — we’re somewhere between difficult artists and pandering kiss-asses. We respect both perspectives for shows — they are both noble in their own way.”

He added he is leaning towards incorporating most of Head Carrier.

“We were playing about four of the songs on the last tour we went out on and they seemed to go over pretty good for songs people hadn’t heard yet. So I am hoping that after release people will be excited to hear the new material — because I would like to play the whole record.”