EP-1 Track-By-Track
Andro Queen
JOEY SANTIAGO: With most of the material, Gil (Norton, producer) had us really,
really focus on the subject of the songs and had us try to score it, cinematically. It was a
good way to approach it, because he knew that, post-breakup, I had worked, scoring for
films and television. It was a completely different vibe from 20 years ago, which was a
theory-based approach, my “Pixies Theory,” if you will, which is… I bend a note and
then another note and it just wriggles around – that’s basically it. I can just look at the
chord and write down the notes that I would play. It’s instinct and I know it’ll work from
the sound of it; I might do a tweak here and there, but 90% of it is right there. With
Andro Queen, as far as recording that, it was one of the newer songs that we put together
in the studio. My interpretation of it is someone that’s coming from outer space, and my
input was trying to score it. On the solo, there’s an atmospheric part that we did to kind
of emulate “outer space.”
BLACK FRANCIS: I based a lot of the poetic meter on a famous old song called “The
Great Pretender,” which was written by Buck Ram. It’s a very well organized and
particular song, lyrically; and I based this song on the rhythm and the length of the lines
and the number of syllables in that skeletal structure. I’ve never done that. I worked a
long time on it and it wasn’t easy to do; I’m not even sure where the music came from,
because usually I write the music first and then the words. This was one of those rare
instances where I wrote the lyrics first and put music underneath that. It was an
interesting exercise.
DAVID LOVERING: It’s all rudimentary stuff: rough rolls and bi-stroke rolls and some
syncopated stuff. I’m quite surprised that I pulled it off because I thought that was going
to be the hardest song for me to play. There were a lot of ideas that (Black) Francis had
that were things that I would not have done. That was fantastic for me because it gave me
another window to look at and an opportunity to try new things. There’s so many
different parts to Andro Queen and I had to get over that; but it worked out great and I’m
very, very happy with it. I have no clue about the lyrics to this one – or any of these songs
– because I don’t follow lyrics at all. I’m about the melody and the flow of it. Maybe it’s
just because I’m a drummer and I’m thinking of all the other things.
Another Toe In The Ocean
BLACK FRANCIS: This song started out as a kind of psychedelic, environmentally
concerned song and I think the end result is far more abstract. It was like working on
“Monkey Gone To Heaven.” At the heart of it is some kind of environmental observation
but the end result is much more abstract with echoes at the core feeling or sentiment. So
this song is like that and for me it’s much more about depression, alcoholism. Something
like that.
JOEY SANTIAGO: This is a good example of where my “Pixies Theory” wasn’t
coming across with Gil. So we added a lot of tremolos, which is very surf-y. Duane Eddy,
Link Wray and all that stuff. On that I used Gil’s Stratocaster to get that sound.
DAVID LOVERING: The chorus is all four-on-the-floor with a kick drum. These are
the only Pixies songs where I’ve done that. Thud, thud, thud and going with the ride
cymbal. And this came about because it was partially what Gil had done with a drum
machine before I got there, to the studio. It was pretty interesting and it was great for me
because it’s like being in a cover band! You don’t have to be inventive; you go and play
what you’ve heard before. So that worked well on this one.
Indie Cindy
BLACK FRANCIS: Yeah! It’s sort of one of our epic songs. If there was going to be a
name for this collection of music, I guess it would be “Indie Cindy.” It feels like the
cornerstone for this body of work. I feel very confident about the lyrics and the music.
It’s funny; the verses of that song were recorded by Joey in his hotel room in
Massachusetts. He was visiting me and helping me put together some demos and we were
doing some recording in his hotel room late in the evening. That particular vocal, the
spoken-word part, we just liked so much; and it’s easy these days in the digital world to
hold on to artifacts from the process as you’re going along that we incorporated it into the
final piece. It’s a plea: not a romantic plea, but a plea. It’s all in the title; I think that says
it all.
JOEY SANTIAGO: That’s a fun one! (Black) Francis came up with that riff in the
beginning, which is really, really mathematical. I think it’s our favorite new one to play
just because it’s really challenging. It’s a got a lot of schizophrenic changes on it and I
particularly like that chorus section where there’s that swell on the guitar. And when I
started playing it with that volume swell, it sounds like a harmonica; and I just said
“Wow!”
DAVID LOVERING: That was a fun one to play. I really like it a lot. At first, the time
changes around the chorus got to me but now it’s the easiest song to play. I think this is
my favorite song of all the songs we recorded.
What Goes Boom
DAVID LOVERING: That was one of the early ones that we worked on before we went
to the studio. It’s kind of a ballsy song with real balls-out playing and it harkens back to a
lot of the harder-edged Pixies stuff, which is my favorite stuff to play. Anything like this,
the punk stuff or fast, is just fun to play.
JOEY SANTIAGO: There’s a bunch of chord changes going around and I stuck with an
E minor triad to give it that tension. There’s a song we do called “Vamos” and there’s a
solo section where I have freedom to “go shithouse.” Since the reunion, there are sounds
that I’ve been coming up with and it just got condensed into this one song, with me going
shithouse. I also like it when the music changes and I don’t.
BLACK FRANCIS: It’s got kind of a metal riff, which I think that on occasion we all
really enjoy playing, even though we’re not a metal band. We sometimes like to lock in
on something that could be for a metal band. So I like that. It’s about a girl. A girl who
plays the bass guitar. I wouldn’t be the first to write a song about some gal that plays bass.
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