Pixies' new album to arrive in October

Since I interviewed the band's guitarist for the last album (see elsewhere on this blog), I'm anxious to hear the new stuff...

Pixies announce their brand-new studio album, The Night the Zombies Came, due for release on October 25 via BMG. You can pre-order the album HERE.

Thirty-five years since their debut album Doolittle landed in the U.K. Top Ten and was certified Platinum in America, and 20 years since their celebrated reformation at Coachella, Pixies are continually a creative entity. 

The Night the Zombies Came is Pixies’ tenth album if you count their classic 1987 4AD EP Come On Pilgrim and the first new music since 2022’s acclaimed Doggerel LP.

Songwriter, vocalist, and guitarist Black Francis explains, “Fragments that are related and juxtaposed with other fragments in other songs. And in a collection of songs in a so-called LP, you end up making a kind of movie.”

‘Chicken’ finds Francis personifying poultry, dealing with decapitation and feeling like an actor in Zombie movies. Listen HERE.

The Night the Zombies Came will also include ‘You’re So Impatient,’ the brand-new single with AA-side ‘Que Sera, Sera.’ For the new album recording sessions, the band returned to work with producer Tom Dalgety, who drummer David Lovering refers to as “a fifth Pixie” after producing 2016’s Head Carrier, 2019’s Beneath the Eyrie and 2022’s Doggerel.

Early on in the recording process at Guilford Sound studio in Vermont, the band noticed the new songs were dividing into two camps: what they came to call the “Dust Bowl Songs” - country-tinged, ballad-esque numbers such as ‘Primrose’ and ‘Mercy Me,’ and on the other side, the album’s furious punk numbers such as ‘You’re So Impatient’ and ‘Oyster Beds.’ Only ‘Jane (The Night the Zombies Came)’ keeps its feet in both camps — a track that Black Francis allegedly likened to being chased by a swarm of bees.

The Night the Zombies Came sessions also saw Pixies welcoming new bass player Emma Richardson (Band Of Skulls) to the lineup, the first British band member to join the Pixies. There’s also an expanded role for guitarist Joey Santiago. After contributing his first-ever Pixies lyrics on Doggerel, for the new record, Santiago wrote the words to ‘Hypnotised’ by completing a complex lyrical riddle of sorts, known as a sestina.

The news of The Night the Zombies Came arrives amidst a packed touring schedule set to take in circa 70 live shows worldwide through 2024 - with even more dates to be announced for 2025. The band just wrapped a tour across North America with Modest Mouse and Cat Power and is playing through Europe before returning to the U.K. in August for a run of already sold-out headline shows at Glasgow Academy and Halifax’s Piece Hall. Major festival performances at London’s All Points East, Victorious, and headline shows at Galway Airport, Belfast’s Custom House Square, and Dublin’s RDS Simmonscourt are all scheduled.

Track listing:

1.Primrose

2.You're So Impatient
3.Jane (The Night the Zombies Came)
4.Chicken
5.Hypnotised
6.Johnny Good Man
7.Motoroller
8.I Hear You Mary
9.Oyster Beds
10.Mercy Me
11.Ernest Evans
12.Kings of the Prairie
13.The Vegas Suite