Pixies have never been a band to stick to a particular sound, and recording a new album for the first time during the pandemic era gave them even more license to experiment.
“When you go to record, you’re, like, ‘Well, I don’t know if anyone’s gonna be able to see this or play this, so why not? F*** it! Just do whatever you want,'” bassist Paz Lenchantin tells ABC Audio. “Your brain kinda opens up to this place that was different than before.”
The result of said brain-opening is Doggerel, the eighth Pixies studio effort. Among the new things the “Where Is My Mind?” outfit brought to the record were songs co-written by guitarist Joey Santiago for the first time. Having played in Pixies for nearly 40 years, Santiago couldn’t help but write a Pixies song.
“To be honest, I did have something in mind that it’s got to fit within the vernacular of Pixies,” Santiago shares. “Unbeknownst to me, these little tricks that we were doing were coming out.”
Doggerel is now the fourth album Pixies have released since the group reunited in 2004, matching the four-record output of their pre-breakup era between 1986 and 1993. Santiago sees the post-reunion albums as a “linear” continuation of Pixies’ earlier work.
“It went in the path where we should be,” Santiago says.
“None of our records really sound alike, none of them,” he adds, while noting, “There’s always a signature in them, and the signature’s still there.”
Doggerel is out now. Pixies are currently playing a run of U.S. headlining shows in support of the record, which continues Monday in Los Angeles.
Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.