Pixies – On Graveyard Hill – single review

Pixies – On Graveyard Hill

Pixies are one of the most influential bands in underground, alternative rock, or whatever they call what they did nowadays, their first three releases belong in every record collection and Kurt Cobain famously said that Smells Like Teen Spirit was his attempt to write a Pixies song.

They have just released a new single. This is what Fighting Boredom think.

Just for the sake of sanity let me just say that for a few years when I was hitting twenty Pixies burnt so brightly in my eyes that they were blinding. Nothing sounded like them, nothing felt like them and putting on the first two records now I can still feel that visceral blooded excitement that I felt the first time my German girlfriend played me her tapes. They were alien. They were a secret that we hadn’t been told about. They blew my head away and it never really came back. That was one of the defining musical moments of my life and I loved the Pixies.

But. But. But. This is just average. Too many bands took what Pixies gave us and twisted it around and made it their own. For Pixies to compete they need to shine again, be brighter than the sun and moon and stars again. For the blessed awful weird to come back, for Black Francis to bloody mean it. Remember the interlude in Surfer Rosa where he shouts ‘You Fuckin’ Die!’ remember that? Well at the start of this new single he clears his throat. That sums up for me Pixies today. It sounds like the Pixies, but Pixies sounded like nothing else ever, including themselves. It’s ordinary. Just ordinary. I’m not seeing anything. Not recommended.


All words by Adrian Bloxham

Adrian Bloxham

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