Pixies: 'We're all getting along famously'

Although it is quite a benchmark, the 60-year-old drummer says he hasn’t felt this excited about one of their records since the classic album Doolittle, which came out in 1989.

“I’m not putting down Indie Cindy or any of our other records, but it was just the thrill of this last one,” he says. “It was great musicianship, we knew all the songs, we pulled them together and pushed it, and sonically it sounds great. It was very exciting for me.”

The analogy between the two albums is something other members of the band have drawn too, with guitarist Joey Santiago describing Doggerel as “Doolittle Snr”. The rattling two-minute punk rock songs might not be there, but the new record does possess some of the energy and eclecticism of Pixies in their prime.

“Charles (Thompson, otherwise known as Black Francis) wrote all the songs within two months before we went into the studio then we traded ideas,” Lovering says. “There are some songs on there which I think are really catchy and lyrically are great. It’s a little boppy here and there and other kind of hard ones, that’s what I like about the whole thing.”

Thirty-three years on from Doolittle, Lovering believes the band have a “different ethic” to when they were younger. “Having the two years off (during the pandemic), it gives you also a much greater appreciation of being in the studio,” he says. “Everything I touched or whatever I did I just had to appreciate that this might not have been happening like that, so it was just a wonderful experience.

“I’m 60 now, and I’ve had carpal tunnel work on my hands. And being older and a little wiser means you’re able to put up with people a little easier. We’re all getting along famously, we’re just appreciating the whole situation we’re in now.”

While Black Francis spent lockdown in Massachusetts tending his chickens and hanging out with his children, Lovering says it was “great being home” with his wife and kids. To enliven the Pixies’ website, a year or so ago he decided to revive his old magic act from which earned a living from during Pixies’ ten-year hiatus between 1993 and 2003. “I started doing the Magic Mondays or the Magic Monthly as it became, because I was at the bottom of my bag of tricks, so to speak,” he says. “It made me write new presentations, things that were Pixies-related or things that the fans might like – that was wonderful to get creative.”

In his two-month flurry of activity before Pixies went into the studio, Black Francis wrote more than 40 songs. Lovering says whittling them down to the 12 that appear on Doggerel was “pretty easy to do” because of the involvement of producer Tom Dalgety, with whom they have built a close relationship over their previous two albums, Head Carrier and Beneath the Eyrie. “The more he has done records with us the more he is family,” he says. “Other than having the craft and knowing what to do, the thing about being a producer is you have to be an ambassador to everyone you are working with, and Tom knows what we’re all about more and more. You’ve got to delegate all of the decisions to him. I think it’s got easier and easier with Tom as far as Charles or us making suggestions or critique, you just let him have it.

“Before we met in the studio he had 40 songs and then Tom whittled them down to whatever that he would send to all of us and we started tossing them around. Out of all the ones that we went into the studio with, we probably didn’t do four or five that Tom had included that batch. We just picked what we thought was great, what would constitute Doggerel and put together sequences, but you’ve got to relegate everything (else) to the producer. I can play drums, he can produce.”

As far as the arrangements go, Lovering says his “mindset was always simplicity” – unlike in the early days. “If you listen to the first Pixies records I’m Neil Peart (from Rush), I’m doing all of the stuff that I love, but over time I think less is more. Even my drum kit has shrunk. I had a lot of cymbals and five drums now I’m down to a very simple kit that you can make do with everything.

“This is the first record in a long time that I got very comfortable coming up with something on the drums and the reason why that is is I’m a slow learner. It takes me forever to figure out how a song goes; it’s usually maybe two months into a tour when I go ‘oh yeah’. But what was great about this was Tom Dalgety had got the demos with drums on, his interpretation of the drums. I thought it was a real drummer but it was a drum machine. What was wonderful about it was it gave me some direction...so I was able to go into the studio with more confidence and interpret that direction.

“The thing is, I think there are parts of this album that aren’t simple for me. There are parts that I never would have played if it wasn’t for Tom. They suit the songs well and I’ve had to learn how to do it.”

For the first time since the band formed in 1986, Santiago also has a couple of songwriting credits on a Pixies album. Lovering explains that his bandmate had been “just strumming around on the couch and I think his girlfriend said, ‘You know, you should do something with that’. He was visiting his brothers in Massachusetts and my manager lives in Connecticut so he went down there to see him and my manager had a guitar and Joey said, ‘Hey, do you want to hear something?’ and played him it and my manager said, ‘That’s great, we should do something with it’. So that eventually got round to Charles and all of us and boom, there it is: Pagan Man.”

Seven years after joining the band, bassist Paz Lenchantin has also become more confident in sharing her ideas in the studio. “When she first joined the band she was a hired gun, but she’s been a full-on Pixie for seven years, and Paz is a musician’s musician, she’s making me play better because I don’t want to be embarrassed, so I’ve had to step up my game as far as being in a rhythm section with her,” Lovering says. “Along with that musicianship, she has great ideas and with the last three albums we’ve done with Paz and Tom she’s had suggestions which we’ve welcomed. Her input is exemplary, it’s wonderful.”

For a band whose lyrics regularly have sci-fi themes, Lovering was delighted to learn that one of the Pixies’ songs had finally made it millions of miles into space. “That was mu crowning achievement,” he says proudly of that fact that Where is My Mind? was played by NASA’s Rover on Mars. “I was just blown away because I’m a big science fan, I love all that stuff,” he says. “I had telescopes growing up with my dad. Charles has sung about it. So it blew me away, I can’t think of any gigs we’ve done or TV show (that quite compare) with the planet Mars.”

Having visited the UK this summer, the Pixies’ world tour continues around North and South America, Japan and Australia through the autumn and winter, but Lovering promises they will be back on these shores next spring. Remarkably, their setlist will change on a nightly basis.

“It’s kind of our schtick or stagecraft,” says Lovering. “It’s taken a few years. I wouldn’t say we’ve got better and better at it but we’re really good at it now and we have a routine. Charles has a microphone, there are hand signals for All Over The World or Planet of Sound or Wave of Mutilation, and there are certain songs that go together. That’s where it’s at right now, we can just look (at each other) and know what to play or I’ll start doing something on the hi-hat and everyone knows what it’s going to be.

“Because we’ve done this for so long, we’ve honed it. That is one of the coolest things, I think, about the band right now that we’re pulling off, that we’re able to do this over night without a setlist. We do have a master list every night that we can choose from but in that time limit of two hours, that’s 30-something songs, it’s all whatever Charles or someone picks that will hopefully cater to that audience. But the only people that suffer from it is our soundman and our lighting director because we all have it down but they have no idea where it’s going.”

Doggerel is out on Friday September 30. https://www.pixiesmusic.com/