Anyone inclined to ponder the changing of attitudes towards beloved rock acts reuniting is advised to look at the respective fortunes of Television and Pixies. The former – an east coast act famed for a unique perspective on alternative guitar rock, sounding utterly unlike anyone else, immune to copyists, makers of a debut album that remains a milestone, and possessors of a sizable cult audience in Europe first time round – returned in 1992. They made an album that was pretty good – far better, in fact, than one might reasonably have expected – and hit the worldwide gig circuit in a limited fashion for a couple of years. Nonetheless, by the time they played the final show of that cycle, at the Forum in north London in June 1993, public interest was so sparse they played to a bare few hundred people. The upstairs of the venue was closed, and there was room for the few downstairs to wander at will from vantage point to vantage point.
By contrast, the latter – an east coast act famed for a unique perspective on alternative guitar rock, sounding utterly unlike anyone else, immune from copyists, makers of a debut album that remains a milestone, and possessors of a sizable cult audience in Europe first time around – reformed in 2004, to wild excitement: the four shows they played at Brixton Academy in London that summer became the fastest-selling in the venue's history, and they've managed to maintain a fairly constant touring schedule ever since, still selling out shows in big venues in major cities to great acclaim, despite the lack of a studio album since 1991.
Pixies had the advantage of returning to a world in which "heritage rock" had become not just an accepted fact of musical life, but a crucial part of the rock market. We now live in a world in which the most minor of 80s indie acts can reunite and find an audience not far short of the one that came to watch Television in June 1993. But that creates its own perils: what was once disturbingly alien and startlingly original just becomes another piece of nostalgia, a fondly regarded page in a scrapbook, devoid of its original meaning. That was clearly the case for Pixies, who decided they needed to record new music when they realised they'd become staples of the oldies circuit – a peculiar fate for a band who sang about incest and waves of mutilation.
At which point the perils multiply, for – as Television also found – when you have created something completely original once, anything that comes later tends to be an anticlimax.
Reading on mobile? Watch Pixies perform What Goes Boom here
All of which brings us, eventually, to Indie Cindy, the first new Pixies album in 23 years. They've already prepared the ground for the world's likely disappointment by releasing the songs across three EPs since last autumn, to the first bad reviews of their career. In truth, it's hard not to think people have been judging the songs against their memories, because sequenced this way, they stand up very well: if this had been released a year after their last album, Trompe Le Monde, it would have fit perfectly adequately into Pixies' discography.
What Goes Boom is a properly thrilling opener, possessing one of those sinister riffs Pixies used to turn out at will; it's followed by Greens and Blues, in which the patented stately-acoustic-guitar-overlaid-with-spectral-electric-lead-line Pixies trick is deployed effectively. Even the title track – with its much-mocked "You put the cock in cocktail, man" line – stands up musically.
In fact it's as if Pixies are at pains to reassure the world these are Pixies songs, so often are their old tricks repeated: you'll lose count of the number of chord changes in the wrong place, not on the fourth beat, but somewhere else you weren't expecting, to give the songs a dynamism and propulsion; but even the repetition cannot diminish its effect. Even when they rock in the most straightforward fashion, as on Blue Eyed Hexe, there's a power and vitality that's familiar from the live shows. The only real misstep is Bagboy, which revives the unwelcome sound, so prevalent in the early 90s, of a guitar band insisting "there's always been a dance element to our music".
It's also a song that highlights the album's greatest weakness: the lyrics, which often sound like an afterthought. "I needed something to eat," Black Francis sings on the musically rather lovely Magdalena 318, "I took a walk down the street." Well, mate, Chicken Cottage stays open late, and they've got an offer on fillet burgers at the moment. Then again, what's he meant to do? Carry on writing about incest, even in middle age, trying to cling on to youth like Simon Pegg in World's End?
"If I ever seem a little strange/ Would you excuse me please?" Francis offers on Greens and Blues – and there's the problem. Pixies no longer seem a little strange, or in need of excuse. They seem like a really pretty good alt-rock band, better than the vast majority of the competition. But when you've previously been one of the most remarkable bands in the world, a lot of people are going to feel very let down by really pretty good.
