Pixies - Beneath the Eyrie

Pitchfork 67

After the disappointing Indie Cindy and the serviceable Head Carrier, the band shows signs of recapturing some of the spark of their classic albums.

The Guardian 60

(BMG/Infectious)
Minus the loud-quiet-loud dynamic, Pixies’ third album since re-forming has creepy songs about witches, spells and death

The dilemma for any re-formed band is whether to try and re-create their “classic sound” or try to develop it, to avoid becoming a tribute to themselves. Thus, Pixies’ third album since reuniting largely shuns the loud-quiet-loud dynamic of their first four albums, which influenced grunge and indie rock for at least a decade. The default mode here is more conventionally anthemic alternative rock: American gothic meets British goth.

The Guardian 40

(BMG)

Revered bands re-forming for live dates is one thing. However, with a few honourable exceptions – the Go-Betweens, Sleater-Kinney , more recently the Futureheads – trying to recreate past glories in the recording studio is generally at best anticlimactic for all concerned. The road to hell is indeed paved with discarded copies of the Verve’s 2008 album, Forth.

Given how brightly they burned in the late 1980s, Pixies were always likely to struggle to live up to expectations when they decided to write new material, but Indie Cindy (2014) and Head Carrier (2016) were woeful by anybody’s standards.