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Pixies now, with the bassist and backing singer Emma RichardsonTravis Shinn<\/p>\nIn keeping with the random nature of popularity in the 21st century, a late-1980s alternative rock band once beloved of floppy-fringed students have become a Gen Z sensation. A video of three teenagers performing an a cappella rendition of\u00a0Pixies\u2019\u00a0Where Is My Mind?\u00a0in an underground car park has had almost 12 million views on TikTok. The band\u2019s 1989 surf rock classic\u00a0Here Comes Your Man was used on the 2025-26 New Year\u2019s Eve finale of\u00a0Stranger Things, and they have more than ten million monthly listeners on Spotify. Pixies\u00a0have thrived against the odds to make it to their 40th birthday; not bad for mostly sixty-something misfits with a catalogue of songs about torture, mutilation and death.<\/p>\n
The American band are celebrating with a victory lap of Britain. \u201cIt would be a little too heavy to call the UK our spiritual home,\u201d says their lead vocalist Frank Black, real name Charles Thompson, an avuncular 61-year-old son of a bar owner from Boston, Massachusetts. \u201cBut even in the lowest points of my solo career, when I was touring in a van and getting trashed by the music press, the UK and some parts of Europe let me stay in the game, which is good for the ego. I would go home and say, \u2018Hey, I\u2019m big in Rotterdam!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
The\u00a0Pixies\u2019 strange, enduring appeal lies in the fact that they have never fitted in, right down to looking more like diligent college students than alternative rockers. \u201cI wake up, put something on, and that\u2019s what I wear on stage,\u201d says the guitarist Joey Santiago of his clothing policy. \u201cIt turned out a lot of people could relate because they would go: \u2018Oh yeah, I\u2019ve got that velour sweater my father made me wear too.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pixies now, with the bassist and backing singer Emma RichardsonTravis Shinn<\/p>\n
However, appearances can be deceptive. Santiago, who was born in the Philippines, met Thompson at the University of Massachusetts in 1984 and formed the band two years later, giving up university in the process. \u201cI was on academic probation straight away,\u201d he says. \u201cI have five brothers and the plan was for all of us to get a college degree, so my parents, even my brothers, were disapproving of my own plans to be in a band. But I knew we were doing something special, something different, from the very start.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then there is the bassist and backing singer Kim Deal, who dressed like she had come straight from the office to make it to the gig. That\u2019s because, in the early days, she had. Deal juggled life in Pixies\u00a0with a job as a medical secretary.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople thought it was a get-up,\u201d Thompson says of Deal\u2019s stage wear. \u201cAt the same time we knew we didn\u2019t have any fancy dance moves, we didn\u2019t like the big hair and posturing that was on MTV at the time, and it was a case of keeping our heads down and getting on with it. All we did was rehearse in a garage, beg to get on the bill of the local club and plug in our amplifiers, because that\u2019s what you were meant to do. Just like the Beatles.\u201d<\/p>\n
With an intense sound that switched between sweet melody and lacerating noise, at once menacing, reassuring and childlike, the band were \u2014 and remain \u2014 unlike anything else out there. You wonder about Thompson and Santiago\u2019s original vision, not least because they got going after placing a classified advert for a bassist who liked the winsome folkies Peter, Paul and Mary and the hardcore punks H\u00fcsker D\u00fc. Deal got the job, but then she was the only person who answered the advert. Deal brought in the drummer David Lovering, who was working with her husband at a Boston branch of Radio Shack, and Pixies\u00a0were born.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt came from being ignorant of things,\u201d Thompson says. \u201cWe didn\u2019t know how everything connects, we weren\u2019t part of a scene, and although we liked different genres of music, we weren\u2019t very good at any of them. I don\u2019t have the Chuck Berry licks and I don\u2019t know how to play Beatles songs, but it turned out to be a good parameter because then I could pick up a guitar, put in my own thoughts, and go: Hey, I\u2019ve written a song. You try and convince the other people in your band about it, you play to a few people in a bar on a Tuesday night, you move to the Friday, and so on. That\u2019s all it comes down to, really.\u201d<\/p>\n
Santiago\u2019s twangy, melody-rich guitar style belongs more to the soundtrack of a surf movie than the mosh pit. \u201cThat\u2019s just the way I played naturally,\u201d he says. \u201cVery quickly we got noticed and I realised I wouldn\u2019t have to go back to college, so we went with it.\u201d<\/p>\n
By 1988, when they released the album Surfer Rosa, Pixies\u00a0were a big deal, celebrated for the quiet-loud dynamics of the music and the grisly originality of the lyrics:\u00a0Cactus\u00a0comes from the perspective of a prison inmate who wants his girlfriend to smear her dress in blood and send it to him. Kurt Cobain said the album served as an inspiration for Nirvana\u2019s\u00a0Nevermind,\u00a0and it did seem like Pixies\u00a0were screaming their way through deep inner torment, although Thompson comes across as a down-to-earth figure who simply liked the idea of being in a band, not the twisted genius of legend.<\/p>\n
\u201cA certain image is chosen and before you know it, people are asking about your childhood,\u201d he says of a time when visceral classics such as Debaser\u00a0(about Luis Bu\u00f1uel\u2019s surrealist film\u00a0Un Chien Andalou)\u00a0and Monkey Gone to Heaven\u00a0(an environmental protest at \u201cthe ocean being used as one big organic toilet\u201d) were being studied for evidence of psychological turmoil. \u201cSuddenly everyone is talking about murder, incest and a whole scary universe when actually most of it was just word association. You try to combine your personality with mumbo jumbo and word choice, and then you have a better chance of making authentic art that is not BS.\u201d<\/p>\n
All of this made for a surprisingly successful commercial formula. \u201cIt\u2019s not like we were being served sushi on a private jet,\u201d Thompson says of Pixies\u00a0in their prime. \u201cIt was still a grungy, messy lifestyle, but it felt good to have some adoration and make a bit of money, and from the very first gig we did get a clear message from the crowd: \u2018There\u2019s something odd about you guys, please play again.\u2019 That supplied me with a certain cockiness. I\u2019d be going around thinking, \u2018Well \u2026 you know \u2026 I must be pretty good \u2026\u00a0Then you realise you can\u2019t be everyone\u2019s golden boy for ever.\u201d<\/p>\n
If you wait long enough, though, you might just be everyone\u2019s golden middle-aged rock band. Thompson split Pixies\u00a0in 1993, feeling that they had reached the end of the road as inter-band tensions rose and exhaustion set in. The reunion a decade later came about by accident. During an interview on XFM Thompson made a joke about the band all jamming together, implying that by then they were no longer talking to each other.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSomehow it made it on to the 24-hour news ticker on CNN: the\u00a0Pixies\u00a0reunion!\u201d he remembers. \u201cMy phone was ringing, the band members got back to me, and eventually we asked, \u2018Well, should we? Just for the hell of it?\u2019 We thought it would be for a year. All of a sudden the money was so much easier than it had been before, with these offers coming in from around the world, so it was really fun to whore around on our repertoire and not worry about anything else.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought it was never going to happen,\u201d Santiago says of the reunion. \u201cWhen we first got back together to practise, we told ourselves that if it was bad we would shake hands and not even go out there, but it sounded good right from the get-go.\u201d<\/p>\n
A decade into the reunion, Deal bowed out. She and Thompson had never been the best of friends and by then she had stepped towards the centre of the stage with her twin sister, Kelley, in the Breeders, so when the idea of recording a new album came up, she wasn\u2019t interested. <\/p>\n
\u201cOnce you\u2019ve run your own band, it isn\u2019t as fun to be in someone else\u2019s,\u201d Thompson concedes. \u201cI like to run the band, that\u2019s part of the whole thing for me, and Kim\u2019s got some of that too. Her leaving definitely called into question the integrity of the band, but the new line-up hasn\u2019t been totally outright rejected by everybody.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
After years of diligent touring with the bassist and backing singer Paz Lenchantin, and then with Emma Richardson, Pixies\u00a0were indeed accepted as an alternative rock institution. Then along came Stranger Things, TikTok mania and a new generation raving about their wild, disturbing universe. It must have come as a surprise.<\/p>\n
\u201cNot really, because I see how my kids discover music through streaming,\u201d Thompson says. \u201cOne of them will get into, I don\u2019t know, Japanese space jazz from the early Seventies. That\u2019s how I found out about things, by rummaging around record stores, so I\u2019m glad musical discovery is still around in its own form. My kids will now accept Nick Drake or Bert Jansch, whatever I was obsessed with when they were younger, and the same thing is happening with\u00a0Pixies. People discover high-quality stuff.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe\u00a0Pixies\u00a0are part of the initiation of teenagers,\u201d Santiago says. \u201cAlongside the Velvet Underground, Sonic Youth and H\u00fcsker D\u00fc, we\u2019re one of those bands: Hey, welcome to college! Open up your mind and discover the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
What does Thompson think of all those\u00a0Pixies\u00a0classics now? \u201cI like to think they\u2019re achieving a kind of folk art,\u201d he says. \u201cI like to imagine the audience going, \u2018Ah, here we go with this one!\u2019 It\u2019s a dance, a theatre, a script you can follow, an ancient form of cause and effect. And then it\u2019s over.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
That\u2019s what Pixies\u00a0have become, 40 years on from first thrilling and disturbing crowds with surf rock songs about incest, mayhem and murder: a folk phenomenon.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Pixies are at Aviva Studios, Manchester, May 24 & 25; Royal Albert Hall, London, May 28 & 29<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In keeping with the random nature of popularity in the 21st century, a late-1980s alternative rock band once…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":452607,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[146,85,46,409],"class_list":["post-452606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452606","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=452606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/452606\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/452607"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=452606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=452606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=452606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}