There goes Indie Cindy whose sails were black when it was windy.
September 21, 2013 8:56 AM   Subscribe

Following their new release, EP1, the Pixies present a video out for their song "indie Cindy." It's about a woman, two men and a murder.
posted by griphus (24 comments total) 7 users marked this as a favorite
 
1 Star on Pitchfork.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 9:00 AM on September 21, 2013 [1 favorite]


Jesus that fucking Pitchfork review. I feel like everyone over there agreed beforehand that it would get either a 10 or a 1 and they'd flip a coin to decide which and then Release the Hyperbole.
posted by griphus at 9:07 AM on September 21, 2013 [5 favorites]


It doesn't sound like Pixies without Kim Deal, they are right about that.
posted by infinitewindow at 9:09 AM on September 21, 2013 [4 favorites]


I actually like the band that their new bass player is from, the Muffs, MORE than the Pixies. But this doesn't sound like the Muffs either.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 9:14 AM on September 21, 2013 [2 favorites]


I saw them on Late Night, and, yeah. I wouldn't have recognized them, visually or sonically, if not for Jimmy Fallon's introduction.

One star is pretty harsh -- if it were by some unknown band, it'd probably get no worse than a 3 -- but it's not as if the band didn't have time to make it good. The comparison of "Another Toe in the Ocean" to Green Album-era Weezer is dead-on. (And, as a Canadian, I feel it my duty to point out that song's occasional melodic similarities to Max Webster's "Paradise Skies.")
posted by Sys Rq at 9:31 AM on September 21, 2013


No, I'd say the one-star review was perfectly apt. In fact, do Pitchfork do zero-star reviews?

If this was a new band, a three star review might be fine. But it's the lack of grace shown in these new recordings, the loss of form. From 3/4s of the people who brought you Surfer Rosa, it's staggering that they should miss by such a wide margin.
posted by The River Ivel at 10:07 AM on September 21, 2013


Yikes, that video!
posted by limeonaire at 10:14 AM on September 21, 2013


No, I'd say the one-star review was perfectly apt. In fact, do Pitchfork do zero-star reviews?

Here you go.
posted by selfnoise at 11:13 AM on September 21, 2013


Yeah, this reminds me that I never did like The Catholics.
posted by klangklangston at 11:14 AM on September 21, 2013 [1 favorite]


.
posted by The Card Cheat at 11:15 AM on September 21, 2013


They have also assigned the score "monkey-drinking-its-own-piss" (out of 10).
posted by en forme de poire at 11:22 AM on September 21, 2013


Did they ever give that one to anyone other than Jet?
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 11:31 AM on September 21, 2013


Well I like the new single. Not as a Pixies song, perhaps, but as a Frank Black song, sure. The EP as a whole, though... yeah, it's not so great.
posted by retrograde at 12:10 PM on September 21, 2013


The video seems to take some of its inspiration from the horror anthology V/H/S.
posted by jonp72 at 1:43 PM on September 21, 2013 [1 favorite]


It doesn't sound like old Weezer because Frank Black wrote a song that sounds like Weezer. It sounds like Weezer because Weezer sounds exactly like every single indie band of the early 90s put through the filter of slick big-label production. Put Pavement, Built To Spill, etc. through the engineering, mix, and mastering of Weezer and they'll all sound just like this, too.

Well, yes and no. I mean, yes, that's what Weezer were originally (the 1994 blue album, as much as I love it, is basically a better-recorded 40-minute rendition of "Where is My Mind") but...

The reason for me that this one track evokes 2001 green album Weezer in particular is that, but for one exception, that album has no dynamics whatsoever -- it's all just everything dimed going chug-chug-chug in three-minute spurts -- which may well have been a conscious effort to get away from the Pixies-esque quiet-LOUD-quiet-LOUD thing that maybe felt too "nineties" for the new millennium. Turns out that without dynamics, though, it's just boring, especially when it's all played at no more than 120bpm so it can't be mistaken for pop-punk, which was also on the way out back in 2001. Lyrics, once clever, became uninspired and uninspiring. There's no movement, no vigour, no personality, just phoned-in formula. And that formula appears to be what was used to stamp out this Pixies song, climb-to-the-chorus and all. Catchy? Yes. But interesting?

(That said, formula aside, if this were on the green album, it'd be the best song by far.)

Ultimately, though, I think the problem with EP1 might just be that once a thing has been emulated as much as The Pixies have been, trying to recapture the specialness that made that thing so worth emulating in the first place is a tricky business.
posted by Sys Rq at 2:14 PM on September 21, 2013 [1 favorite]


P.S. I find it funny how much I'm reminded of Coldplay, from the backwards video for Indie Cindy to the cooing falsetto in Another Toe. I wonder if it's an inside joke?
posted by Sys Rq at 3:45 PM on September 21, 2013


I got all excited over the possibility of adding to my Pixies collection, but 90 seconds of "Indie Cindy" disabused me of that notion. Meanwhile, Kim Deal has been putting out solo 7"s on her website, and they've been fantastic.
posted by Banky_Edwards at 8:01 PM on September 21, 2013 [1 favorite]


Deal or no Deal, Paradiso October 5th.

(I will be a little sad she's not there)
posted by humboldt32 at 2:54 AM on September 22, 2013


Damnit! I came to make the Deal Or No Deal joke!
posted by Mezentian at 2:59 AM on September 22, 2013 [1 favorite]


Having now listened to the song a few times, it sounds a bit like the Bossanova-era Pixies chucking some Big Black in the chorus.

It's a fine song, I suppose, but... Not The Pixies.

There's a reason Joy Division became New Order.
posted by Mezentian at 3:41 AM on September 22, 2013


From Pitchfork:
but considering it is the first new release bearing the Pixies name since 1991’s Trompe Le Monde, it leaves deep marks
and
When I saw them play after they reunited, nine years ago, I distinctly remember the thrill,
shared by the other twentysomethings around me,


This is what old age feels like, right?
posted by Mezentian at 3:45 AM on September 22, 2013 [1 favorite]


Coldplay? It reminded me, and was compared unfavorably with, Alt J. I enjoyed Bagboy for what it is. The EP is mediocre for exactly the reasons The World Famous mentioned.
posted by legospaceman at 4:20 AM on September 23, 2013


Joy Division was a band with a great singer and terrible rhythm, whereas New Order was a band with a terrible singer and machine-quantized rhythm.

Ian Curtis? A "great singer"? Have you ever actually heard Joy Division?
posted by Sys Rq at 12:44 PM on September 23, 2013


"Put Pavement, Built To Spill, etc. through the engineering, mix, and mastering of Weezer and they'll all sound just like this, too."

Case in point.
posted by klangklangston at 5:16 PM on September 23, 2013


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