My Top Ten Albums of 2014 - #7

7. Pixies - Indie Cindy

Part of this record was released back in 2013 on the band's website, so it feels odd to be including it here. However, I stopped myself from including that in last year's countdown because it wasn't an album, so I could hardly ignore it this year.

The reformed Pixies then, now without both Kim Deal and the definite article: what else do you need to know? Their first album of new material in 23 years (yes, that'll make us all feel old) was almost as good as we wanted it to be: but certainly a hell of a lot better than we expected it to be. From the David Lynch does Talking Heads insanity of the lead single Bagboy, this was obviously a band still firing on all cylinders. And as opening lines go, Black Francis has rarely written better:

I had a bad reaction
To your public hobby writing
I get no satifaction
From your very recent sightings

Once he starts complaining that our bad breath and dirty teeth makes us all talk shit... well, even now, Bagboy remains my favourite song on the record. But there are many other great flavours to be found in this tube though, from the quintessentially Pixies What Goes Boom? (the video is worth 3 minutes 33 seconds of anybody's life) to Frank's nutty salute to Yorkshire witchcraft (apparently!) Blue-Eyed Hexe. Another Toe In The Ocean is the album's most radio-friendly offering while the title track is hilarious. Few of the lyrics make the remotest bit of logical sense, but when did they ever? They paint vivid pictures and suggest all kinds of hallucinatory insanity though, and that's exactly what you want from a Pixies album. Yeah, OK, as Martin pointed out, there's a few tracks in the second half that could be anybody (they're just not Pixies enough), but even without Kim, this doesn't feel like another Black Francis solo album. It feels like the band we all loved when we were 20 years younger. It's good to have them back.





Next up, at number #6... a former Kiley takes a journey.