Music and Recording Features

If there's one word that best describes the sound of the Boston-bred alt-rock quartet known as Pixies, it has to be "dynamics." It's a musical milieu Pixies have deftly presented for 37 years and counting, right from the outset of the sinister janglefest known as "Caribou," the opening track on their inaugural September 1987 EP on 4AD, Come On Pilgrim.

From there, short, sanguine, sweet, succinctly titled songs like "Debaser," "Velouria," "Monkey Gone to Heaven," "Gigantic," "Here Comes Your Man," "Gouge Away," and "Where Is My Mind?" have all served to cement the bedrock of Pixies' planet of sound. Chief Pixies songwriter and vocalist/guitarist Black Francis—born Charles Thompson—recently described it in an interview for Stereophile as this: "Let's be quiet. Now, let's be loud. Let's be whispering. Now, let's be explosive." That's a precise four-sentence descriptor not only of their entire prior CV but also of Pixies' latest, and ninth studio album, the forebodingly titled The Night the Zombies Came, which was released by BMG in October 2024. From the patented churn of "You're So Impatient" to the clever sestina stylings (footnote 1) of "Hypnotized" to the Leonard Cohen–esque huskiness of "Mercy Me," it's pure Pixies sonic manna to the nth degree, as delivered by Francis and his longtime bandmates, guitarist Joey Santiago and drummer David Lovering, along with new bassist/backing vocalist Emma Thompson.

Helping harness that Pixies sound elixir for 21st century listeners is British producer/mixer Tom Dalgety (Royal Blood, Ghost). Dalgety first got behind the Pixies production boards for Head Carrier, the band's 2016 album on Pixies Music that followed the brief reunion with their core '80s/'90s producer Gil Norton on 2014's https://www.stereophile.com/content/new-pixies-album">Indie Cindy (footnote 2). "If you listen to the post-reunion record they did with Gil, that one sounds very different to the records they did together in the late '80s," Dalgety observes during his own interview for Stereophile conducted last year. "There's definitely been an evolution of their sound, possibly due to a slight era change. Now, I do go about some of those things in a different way—but I'm not sure how much of that is me personally, or whether the band have changed just a bit. For instance, David [Lovering] doesn't favor that really highly tuned snare drum sound anymore."

Did the band notice anything different between the Norton and Dalgety production styles? "Well, they're very different personalities—but at the same time, they're both very schooled," Black Francis notes. "They have a British kind of worldview in terms of recording and producing. They both are very British—but we tend to like that, you know? There are probably lots of differences, but I think what we like about them both is that they're very old school. They each got brought up a certain way in terms of their careers, and how they were trained—and they got trained up correctly."

Dalgety was well positioned to bring that Pixies sound into the here and now. "It's funny," he recalls. "Prior to working with them, I worked with countless bands who wanted to sound like the Pixies. They wanted to have elements of their sound—that bright, zingy bass sound, and obviously the legendary, dynamic loud/quiet, loud/quiet thing. I had good practice that, if I could make a complete unknown band sound a bit like the Pixies, then when I actually had an opportunity to record the Pixies, it was like, 'Well, okay, I've got no excuse now.'"

The band approves of Dalgety's choices behind the board. "We've been working with him for about 10 years, and we don't really question it," Francis confirms. "We just kind of let go and let Tom do his thing. He has his particular methods. He's also a very good manager of time—and that's probably a big one for us anyway, the time-management aspect of it."

Francis pauses for just a moment before further reflecting, "I don't want to say it's all because I've finally been able to find someone who can facilitate my dreams. [laughs.] It's a little more humble than that. I try to just do my job now—write the songs, perform what it is I've got to do on them, and leave a lot of the decision-making to our producer. Or maybe I just learned to shut up and stay out of the way. [laughs again.]"

One carryover from then-Pixies to now-Pixies on the Zombies record is a notable 1950s vibe—and not just in that sci-fi/horror movie kind of way the album title alludes to. "We do touch on that, but only in a very 'loose' kind of way," Francis says. "If we were trying to do things that were exactly like something or some era, we would probably go about it in a different way, because there are ways to do that. But we're definitely going for something much looser when we reference other genres or techniques."

Adds Dalgety, "I always try and channel a little bit of that kind of '50s flavor, and I think there's a lot of that inherently in Charles's [ie, Black Francis's] songwriting. Sometimes, you need to put a bit of slapback on the vocal and sort of pinpoint that era in an obvious way." Examples, please. "A few records back, there's a song called 'Bird of Prey' that has a kind of skiffle-y groove, and we had a similar kind of vocal sound on 'Pagan Man,' from the last album." (footnote 3) Not to mention, of course, those feels being part and parcel of certain song elements in "Chicken" and "I Hear You Mary" on Zombies.

Since Pixies records often come in around (if not under) 40 minutes long, it's no surprise Zombies has very much been positioned as an album to listen to on vinyl. "I appreciate everyone getting into their audiophile inner selves," Francis allows, "and I know Tom works hard to make sure our record isn't too long so that the vinyl application of the record will sound good." Concurs Dalgety, "I always set those parameters for myself by constructing a record very much with a piece of vinyl in mind, yes. I always think about what a great opening track would be, and what would be the best ending track that's the same no matter what medium you're playing it on. But there are also a lot of tunes I love that are Track 1 of Side B. It's like a chance to have a second start, so I'm always thinking with that in mind too. And, just in terms of the running time, I think there's something very beautiful about having an album be between 40 and 45 minutes of music. To me, that's the sweet spot for how long people will listen."

The other Pixies secret sonic sauce, if we're even allowed to call it that, comes from the nonverbal communication three of its bandmates share after decades of playing and recording together. "Well, I wouldn't say we can see what's going to happen, but you're right—there's not a lot of verbal analysis that goes on," Francis clarifies. "I guess we've done a lot together by now, so there's not really much deep talk about stuff anymore since the talking doesn't seem to really lead anywhere. It's not like we have any kind of magical power, or anything like that—it's just common sense. What happens is, when you do things enough, you do things more and more on instinct."

If the sound and feel of The Night the Zombies Came tell us anything—and with apologies to the very British sensibilities of Monty Python—then Pixies are very much not dead yet. (This interview has been edited for clarity.)

Mike Mettler: : I've heard you say you view an LP as a movie. As one of its directors, you have different fragments you have to figure out how to put together, and whether it comes across as a linear or nonlinear story.

Black Francis: : Well, of course, an album is not a visual medium. It's interesting—if you talk about the lyrics aspect to any anybody's record, there are no rules, but I think one will find that if your songs are lacking visualization, they might be running a little on the boring side. We don't sit around and go, "Is this cinematic enough?" But we do sit around and go, "Does it make me feel grand? Where are the visuals? Where is this song taking me?"

Mettler: : When you're writing songs, you often start with vocal sounds, as opposed to words. Give me a specific example from The Night the Zombies Came where you were thinking, "I'm just going to make a sound here and figure out the words later."

Francis: : Well, for example, there's a song called "The Vegas Suite," which plays around a lot with soft rhymes. "Save us." [pauses.] "Hate us." [pauses.] "Forgave us." I always do things like that. I didn't know for sure the words "Vegas" or even "Las Vegas" were going to be mentioned in the song—but it was likely they would be. Certainly, I knew I would get some soft rhyming from that general vicinity. And, in the end, I did keep the Vegas references (footnote 4). So, that's a perfect example of me being informed by particular vowel or consonant sounds that might suggest a particular word, or a certain word that rhymes with that word—and it will end up being the door which I walk through when it comes to actually finishing off the song and fleshing out the lyrics. I walked through a door called "Las Vegas," and it became part of the story.

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Footnote 1: Sestina is a somewhat elaborate poetic form that was invented in the 1200s by a troubadour named Arnaut Daniel. For "Hypnotized," Francis enlisted Santiago to assist with finishing the lyrics.

Footnote 2: During the band's initial heyday, Gil Norton (Foo Fighters, Gomez) produced Doolittle (1989), Bossanova (1990), and Trompe le Monde (1991), all on 4AD/Elektra. Indie Cindy (2014) was released on Pixies Music.

Footnote 3: "Bird of Prey" is on 2019's Beneath the Eyrie, and "Pagan Man" is on 2022's Doggerel. Both albums were released on Infectious Music/BMG.

Footnote 4: "I'm going to Vegas" is in the second verse of "The Vegas Suite," and "Back in Las Vegas" is in the fifth verse.