(Track from EP, “EP-2”)
The anticipation was painful to say the very least. Ferreting around on 26th November after nothing but a rumour of “EP-2”, Pixies fans have wanted to know where all the new material has been hiding for months. We got a sneak peak last September with the surprise released “EP-1”, four flawless songs that left us screaming for more. Things only escalated with the addition of new songs to the band’s live sets, the low-resolution audience recordings of which I have strategically avoided so as to make “EP-2”’s eventual surfacing as orgasmic as possible. So when I woke up this morning to have NME’s Facebook page hand me the lead track from said EP of my dreams, I was understandably happy.
In the months between a scathing Pitchfork review and the firing of replacement bassist Kim Shattuck, the band have been most elusive as to the content of their planned new releases. The only lead really was Black Francis and David Lovering agreeing that the next EP would be more punk and decidedly snappier than the first, the four songs (“Indie Cindy” especially) pertaining more to the fuller pieces of the band’s canon (e.g. “The Happening”, “All Over The World”) as opposed to the concise, one and two minute skits that have made albums like “Surfer Rosa” and “Doolittle” so famous (e.g. “Broken Face”, “There Goes My Gun”, “Crackity Jones” etc.)
“Blue Eyed Hexe” is (at the time of writing) a mere one hour and thirty minutes old and comes from a place that’s somewhere in-between. At three-and-a-half minutes, it’s just the perfect ‘pop’ length. However, the archetypal Pixies dysfunction dominates the lyrics to create a song that, as a whole, is anything but, from the title’s German allusions to witchcraft and the use of the word ‘vivisection’ in the opening line.
The music is different as well. Or perhaps I should say the same? With some of the sounds on “EP-1”, the band broke away from their trademark ‘noise’, the loud/quiet technique they pioneered; “Andro Queen” particularly, whilst superb, was quite synthy and flowing. “Blue Eyed Hexe” is apologetic, harking back to the sonics that have made the band so institutional on the alternative-rock scene, cascading violently down in streaks of raw and messy guitar shrieks, with Francis’ own trademark screams making an appearance toward the close of this bizarre rock oddity.
Joey Santiago’s solo is a classic moment, described by long-time producer Gil Norton as ‘sound[ing] like you're going to have sex with this blue-eyed hexe’. The lead squeals like some sort of violently ill creature in immense pain, but the anarchic and distorted twists combined with a playful disregard for pop-music convention induce the same old sensation of immense enjoyment that the one-note solo of “Manta Ray” or the sub-two minute, opening outburst of “Trompe le Monde” have so expertly achieved before it.
It’s by no means perfect – when a landmark band takes forever-and-a-day to churn out new music, it’s very easy to hand out five star ratings and relentlessly worship the material. It’s also easy to be damning when you don’t get exactly what you’ve spent months crafting outlandish expectations. My first impressions of “Blue Eyed Hexe” were such as this, my gut reactions appearing in this order: disappointment, ‘meh’, and ‘where are the new and exciting sounds of “EP-1”?’
Technically, I would say that “…Hexe” does not equate to the same genius as “Andro Queen” or “What Goes Boom” and, for not breaking out and for not so wildly experimenting, I don’t like it as much. That said, it’s obvious and less down to opinion, that this is the sound of a band whose initially amateur alternativeness now sounds accomplished. And to the punk purists, it’s the first real marker of Pixies’ return to form after “EP-1”’s epic departure, which I think we can now say, with hindsight, lacked the little golden touches of nostalgia that make this first moment from “EP-2” not ground-breaking, but heart-warming.
★★★★
Versions of “Blue Eyed Hexe"
EP Version - 3:25