E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

There are only a few possible albums from reformed bands that could have been potentially more exciting that the idea of a Pixies reunited giving us Indie Cindy - their first studio album since 1991.  Perhaps a new Smiths , Nirvana  or Beatles LP? But really, those aren't forthcoming in this world, or the next, so what we have are 12 tracks, some released last year as EPs, but now forming a coherent album, which deserves to be treated, if not with kid gloves, then at least with some reverence. For, Pixies are the most important American indie/alternative group of the 1980s, and hugely influential, as well as beloved. Doolittle remains arguably the single most astonishing guitar band record ever released - nothing, not even punk, could have prepared us for the violent, witty, and weird references to Surrealist French film, serial killers, sexual abuse, Satanism, and, well, monkeys going to heaven.  Sung and screeched, of course. That was then, let us come to the ...

Doolittle , whose 20 th anniversary was last Friday, is perhaps the least likely Easter release of all time, and, I think, one of the greatest pop culture products of the last 30 or so years. Anyway, it's a great album, and one of my ten favourite. The lines "If the devil is six/ Then God is seven!" must be among the most ecstatic and joyously weird ever sung. Pixies albums are strange, exciting, exotic, and chilling events. On Doolittle , religion, surrealist film, mass murder, true love, general mania, desire, the body, and evolutionary theory, get flummoxed with sounds never before linked - ululating and alternatively crooning vocals, perhaps the creepiest, most plaintive of all time and most willing to go new places - and zanily , uncannily creative use of the rock palette of instruments. It's the album that, when you heard it, you knew you were "alt" or "indie". Heaven it was to be young in 1989. Pixies were to music what Peter Lorre was to...