Pixies - The Night The Zombies Came

If one takes 2022’s ‘Doggerel’ as cementing the idea of a Pixies 2.0, the record which fully realised the glimmers of greatness that threatened through 2016’s ‘Head Carrier’ and 2019’s ‘Beneath the Eyrie’ while discourse raged (and rages) on, then, to make like its protagonists and borrow a phrase from our French cousins, plus ça change. ‘The Night The Zombies Came’ is unmistakeably Pixies: ‘Kings of the Prairie’, ‘Johnny Good Man’ and opener ‘Primrose’ perhaps the most ‘them’ of all. There’s some choice wordplay, from the lost dog ballad ‘Mercy Me’ including the invocation “…and I prayed to Saint Bernard”, to closer ‘The Vegas Suite’ managing to rhyme “save us”, “hate us”, “forgave us” and the titular “Vegas”. And, of course, there’s another new bassist, the record featuring the debut of Band of Skulls’ Emma Richardson.

It’s when the pattern deviates somewhat from the expected that ‘The Night The Zombies Came’ is at its most exciting: the ’50s sonic cues that peppered ‘Doggerel’ remain, but the spite doesn’t. If ‘sprightly’ was a surprising descriptor last time around, then try jolly and dreamy (‘Hypnotised’), and genuinely pretty (the sprawling yet infectious ‘The Vegas Suite’). The exuberant blues-punk romp of ‘Ernest Evans’ is a delight as is the ’70s punk of ‘Oyster Beds’, while ‘Motoroller’ treads the new/familiar line with enviable dexterity to leave an open-ended question: does it sound like something else, or has everything else just borrowed from Pixies?