Pixies – Blue-Eyed Hexe
Trailing EP-2, more new material from grunge’s godparents evinces Zep growl, witchy raunch. Hear it now.
PERHAPS THE MOST CONVINCING new material yet shared by the alt.rock legends turned reformation soap opera, Pixies' Blue-Eyed Hexe starts like The Cult doing Led Zeppelin on their awesome/ridiculous 1987 album Electric (with perhaps a soupçon of U-Mass off Trompe Le Monde), riffing on an aptly occult theme while frontman Charles “Black Francis” Thompson howls and gibbers just like the Black Francis of yore. It’s adorned with a cutout-style animation video by a weirdo calling himself Mount Emult and it’s just the sort of thing you’d have hoped to catch on Snub TV or the elusive Indie Chart segment of The Chart Show back at the death of Ye Olde ’80s.
Pixies' EP-2 – featuring Blue-Eyed Hexe and three more brand new songs: Magdalena, Greens And Blues and Snakes – was recorded during October 2012 at Rockfield Studios in Wales, with producer Gil Norton. It features artwork designed by 4AD design legend Vaughan Oliver and is available exclusively on the band’s website as a DDL (mp3 only), lossless DDL, limited edition 10-inch vinyl, and as part of special bundles.
But Blue-Eyed Hexe? “It’s a tale from the northwestern part of the UK,” explains Black Francis, “and it’s a witch-woman kind of a song. That’s what a ‘hexe’ is, and ours is a blue-eyed hexe.”
Guitarist Joey Santiago adds, “Gil wanted a swagger, he wanted the guitar solo to sound like you’re going to have sex with this blue-eyed hexe.”
We just like that they hyphenated “Blue-Eyed”. It’s the kind of attention to detail you just don’t get in indie rock these days.