Wave of Retaliation: The Pixies' Joey Santiago Interviewed

Joey Santiago tells us all about the Pixies new album Indie Cindy, the trials of being on tour and what he would like to do to those who discount the band's reunion as 'a craven cash-in'

Feature by Colm McAuliffe | 25 Jun 2014

The Pixies have released a new album, their first in 23 years, and guitar whizz Joey Santiago is apoplectic. The first reviews for Indie Cindy have begun to land as we talk and, perhaps for the first time in their career, the band are suffering a critical backlash. Whereas a typical Pixies song consisted of shrieking and gnashing, manic interjections tempered with sporadic lurches into lucidity, the 2014 edition of the band – now with Paz Lenchantin on bass replacing not one, but two Kims – has something similar but it’s tempered with a certain…polish. A certain predictability.

The extremes of emotion are gone, no longer at once haggard and luscious, but existing somewhere in the middle ground. Indie Cindy isn’t a bad album – it’s just that the bar is set staggeringly high. In a rather foolhardy moment, The Skinny has begun to relay some of these… concerns to Santiago. 

“What do you mean [The Guardian] said the album was a ‘craven cash-in’? What about the music?” he queries. “Come on. That’s just stupidity. Cash in? Fuck. We paid for the album ourselves and we weren’t trying to cash in, we were just trying to be relevant. And the other point – of course we want to make a profit. I mean, why do people get up in the morning? I’d love to take this reviewer on tour with us. She doesn’t have to play, she just has to wake up when we wake up, go through different time zones when we go through them, she doesn’t have to play to any fans, she doesn’t have to get as nervous [as we do], she’s just gotta eat at the right time, sleep at the right time, take a shit at the right time… all those things. Come on! This is a more demanding job than most others out there. I mean, going to the office, punching the clock, making coffee, we don’t wanna do that. It’s a hassle... believe me.”

A hassle? “Okay, maybe it’s not a hassle but it’s more difficult than people think. At the end of the day, we’re earning that money but we’re not doing it just for that, we’ve got families! If we didn’t need to earn money, I would keep on composing music. If I start composing music and was getting big films, is that a cash-in? Am I cashing in? [laughs] It’s silly.”


"I don’t think we’ve ever had this lightness amongst us. That’s nothing against Kim Deal" – Joey Santiago


A lot of this negativity stems from support for the now absent two Kims (Deal and Shattuck); the former reportedly waking out from the band in a Monmouth coffee shop and the latter apparently fired over the phone last November…“Yeah, well you work with the second Kim [Shattuck]. You check her out yourself, you take her to an office, just as a temp, and you hang out with her. See how you like it.”

Relations are still somewhat strained then? “Not now. Paz is in there and Paz means ‘peace.’ She keeps everything light. I don’t think we’ve ever had this lightness amongst us. That’s nothing against Kim Deal – there was a rub there but it was a healthy kinda rub. Paz is a player, she hasn’t taken a break since she’s been in the band and she’s with her other band right now – Entrance – playing shows across Europe.”

Let’s roll back a little. The Pixies’ first four albums displayed a magnificent hyperactive energy, splendidly impulsive with scant regard for sonic or linguistic syntax, a very natural unnaturalness. But communication between the band members was notoriously ruffled; frontman Black Francis (aka Charles Thompson) seemingly split the band up via fax on New Year's Day 1993. Since then, his solo career was a case of diminishing returns while Kim Deal briefly burned bright with The Breeders before becoming mired in myriad addictions. Santiago remained away from the spotlight while Lovering took the natural step of becoming a magician. After much speculation, the band reunited as a touring unit in 2003, eventually recording one new single, the Deal-penned Bam Thwok, and were seemingly content to play the festival circuit ad infinitum with little prospect of more material until 2013 when the band began releasing a series of EPs, now collated as the Indie Cindy album. What has changed in the interim?

“We’re definitely better players,” admits Santiago. “We’re more gung-ho about things now, we go to shows and try to give the best show possible. Not to say that we didn’t do that in the beginning but right now we’re just totally conscious of it. It’s invigorating playing the new songs, we’re still tweaking them. It took us a while to like playing the old stuff [again] because back then, around the time of Doolittle, we were really struggling with it live, trying to figure out the material. In essence, we were still working on it. And we were taking more substances then. No one has drug problems but before shows we used to – or I used to anyway – take drugs as a crutch. But now, going on stage with nothing is a natural high. No safety net, so it’s more exciting.”

The band re-united with Gil Norton for the Indie Cindy material. The Liverpudlian producer helmed the band’s final three albums first time around and proffered a more polished version of the Pixies’ frantic intensity. Was Gil first choice on this occasion or did they ever envisage taking a different producer on board? “Well, we kicked around other names, we really thought at this point that because we hadn’t been recording for so long, we didn’t want another variable in there, we didn’t want a ‘new thing.’ So we didn’t want some new producer running away [with the album]! With Gil, there was a mutual amount of keeping each other under control.”

How does Santiago feel about playing the newer songs in tandem with the older Pixies material? Does he feel the two eras of the band are on a similar level? “I definitely love playing Magdalena the most, it goes over really well, even from the get-go – that strange guitar I come in with, the strange beginning, it’s just really haunting and beautiful. As for our sound – it starts with the songwriting but at my end, it starts with the style of guitar I play – people seem to like it. Charles leaves me alone so it sort of massages itself into sounding like the Pixies.”

As the primary songwriter, does Black dictate what Santiago should and shouldn’t play? “No, he doesn’t. He doesn’t even enter the room. I don’t know what the hell he does when I’m gone, maybe he just goes to the pub. He just comes back in and he’ll be smiling and saying ‘yes.’”

Along with the return of Gil Norton as producer, the cover design is courtesy of the legendary Vaughan Oliver, who designed the band’s previous sleeves for 4AD. Was that sense of continuity important? “Oh yeah, I’m delighted Vaughan is back. And I’m also delighted I finally got used to his accent. It veers between this Scottish brogue filtered through having a few pints. I couldn’t ever understand him. All I could do was nod my head. I couldn’t for the life of me… ’what the fuck is this guy saying?’ I love the cover on the new album. We just leave that guy alone as well, that’s entirely his department.”

It certainly feels like a rather exciting time to be in the Pixies right now. A new album to promote, another to be recorded imminently, a new member bringing the harmony and tranquil and an entire summer of festivals on the horizon. “Yeah,” confirms Santiago. “We’re off to Sydney next, four shows at the Opera House and then travelling to Barcelona. And sure, I’d love to take that journalist with us, get her to play four shows and go sit in the airport, stop over, and get to the next venue twenty four hours later. We’re earning it!”

Playing London Field Day on 8 Jun; Manchester Castlefield Bowl on 10 Jul and T in the Park on 11 Jul. Indie Cindy is out now. http://pixiesmusic.com