PIXIES- Head Carrier
It’s unfair to weigh this band, the Pixies of today, against the Pixies of legend. Unfair, but almost irresistible. A short, sharp shock ensemble that made jolie laide punk rock designed to get under your skin, for a few volatile years around the turn of the 80s, Pixies were essential listening. Three decades later they’re older, greyer, missing one creative spark and now perhaps best known for that one song from that one film. Amazing then that ‘Head Carrier’ doesn’t stack up too badly. Where 2013 comeback album ‘Indie Cindy’ felt like a disconnected group in second gear, ‘Head Carrier’ is sprinkled with a nostalgic kind of manic magic. The title track’s swirling space rock, the disarming charm of ‘Might As Well Be Gone’, and the eerie central melody of ‘Oona’ impress early and even though there’s a fair chunk of anaemic filler and I can’t unhear how much ‘Classic Masher’ starts off sounding like the American Office theme, this goes a great way to scratching an almost 30-year-old itch.
