Album review by Bec Harbour
This is the Pixies 10th album, if you count the extended EP Come On Pilgrim. The Night the Zombies Came could almost be a concept album with themes of dystopia, science fiction and urban decay. Forget the however many albums are in between this and Trompe Le Monde, this is the successor of tracks like ‘Motorway to Roswell’ right here.
Opening with ‘Primrose’ the sound is late first iteration of the Pixies, with the charming harmonies and acoustic ballad-esque sound. The album then drops you into ‘You’re So Impatient’ to the full on punkish alt-rock we love from the Pixies.
‘Jane (The Night the Zombies Came)’ is back to the harmonies and acoustic elements with the album so far doing the loud-quiet-loud dynamic that the band is famous for, song by song instead of within the songs. Except that ‘Chicken’ is also a quiet song, but the lyrics on this one absolutely hark back to the lyrical content of the Surfer Rosa/Come On Pilgrim era, pulling from the sublimely ridiculous parallels of a man behaving like a chicken about doing the right thing by his partner (what that thing is not clear, could he be helping save Jane from the zombies – it would track for this album being a concept album…)
Is this becoming more proggy? Pixies are no strangers to exploring genres in their music. ‘Hynotised’ asks “is there anybody out there?” If the zombies had cornered you in a place, this is a reasonable question to ask and carries the sci-fi monster theme further into the album.
On ‘Johnny Good Man’ we have a Neil Young interlude – a straight rock song which the Pixies do very well, while I like the song, the backing vocal seems clunky and lacking harmony in places. ‘Motoroller’ seems to be a play on “Motorola” with a guttural chanting chorus. It’s about here that I realise that the production is very polished on this record and the rawness of other records might be the missing piece on this one. ‘I Hear You Mary’ is another straight softer track and I am wondering if all the greatness is at the beginning of this record.
Thankfully ‘Oyster Beds’ allows the album to pull itself out of the middle of the album where is was becoming a bit slow. It is energetic and this will be a live track that they will do well to include on their upcoming tour dates.
‘Mercy Me’ “I lost my dog down in Tennessee” also pulls us back into the ridiculous lyricism and the quiet indie sound. But the album pulls us back into a more punk sound with ‘Ernest Evans’ with Joey Santiago’s signature surf rock inflected jangle guitars sounds.
There seems to be a lot of borrowed sounds on this album, and maybe there is on their other albums and I was not musically broad enough back then to recognise them, the intro to ‘King of the Prairie’ sounds like they are about to kick off ‘Laid’ by James, thankfully it turns into its own beast after the intro. The closing song is ‘The Vegas Suite’ and they tell us that it is inspired by ‘Que Sera Sera’. While the lyrical sentiment might be similar, the music on the first few plays does not, the song neatly bookends an album that probably needs a few more play throughs to work out what is going on here.
It is no secret that I am a massive Pixies fan, I have the vinyl boxsets, t-shirts and other memorabilia, hell I even named my cat Black Francis. I have felt that the last few albums, compared with the pre-break up albums were a bit pedestrian with glimmers of the greatness we know this band has. Joey Santiago contributed significantly to several songs on the album and perhaps that tension of releasing control of the music writing has awoken something that the Pixies needs in their creative process?
The Night the Zombies Came is reminiscent of my experience with Trompe Le Monde – on the first few listens, there were songs I loved straight up, then there were other songs that took longer and a lot more listens.
The Night the Zombies Came does have those moments of greatness and the more I listen, the more I understand where the rest of the album fits in and maybe begin the process of loving it as a whole.
Pixies are on tour next month in Australia with Pearl Jam.
