Album Review: ‘Indie Cindy’

The Pixies are not a normal rock band – but that’s nothing new.

Through the group’s turbulent legacy of defining alternative rock in the late ’80s and early ’90s, followed by an extremely extended hiatus of 23 years, frontman Black Francis has explored themes of existentialism (“Where Is My Mind?”), maritime suicides (“Wave of Mutilation”), surrealism (“Debaser”) and pious primates (“Monkey Gone to Heaven”).

In the band’s first full-length studio album since 1991’s “Trompe le Monde,”“Indie Cindy,” composed of the 12 tracks released in the last year under three Pixies’ EPs, Francis may have just gone off the deep end. And without bassist Kim Deal – who finally left the group in 2013 – to throw him a life preserver of grooving bass licks and soft-spoken harmonies, Francis may very well have aimed the Pixies down a rabbit hole of extraterrestrials and sprites that will be hard to climb back out from.

The band’s sixth studio album, “Indie Cindy” is a musical work that struggles to find its footing between becoming a Pixies’ tribute album or an art rock record mixed with grunge-sounding guitars and hints of electronica. The album’s first track, “What Goes Boom,” mixes the heavy sound of crunchy, distorted guitars and angsty choruses with the lyricism of Francis’ wispy verses, filled with internal rhyme.

“Greens and Blues,” the record’s second song, brings back hope that the Pixies may have some sense still in them. The song seems to mirror the vintage Pixies format of Francis’ simple acoustic guitar paired with the melodic sounds from guitarist Joey Santiago, both over a strong backbeat from drummer David Lovering. “Greens and Blues” is an existential trip down memory lane for the band – the sacred image of an overweight Francis pounding away on his acoustic guitar while Santiago patiently performs a gentle tremolo creates one of the strongest feelings of the album.

“I’m not together, and you know it’s true/ My bits all wander in the trees,” Francis croons in the first verse of “Greens and Blues.”

All that’s missing is the stellar bass work of Deal – an absence that turns into a larger drawback for the rest of the album.

For instance, in the harder songs on the album, such as “Blue Eyed Hexe,” the band’s grungy electric guitars keep gaining more energy as the track runs, but don’t really seem to put it into anything beyond roaring choruses. Similarly, in the album’s first single, “Bagboy,” Francis’ rambling verses, behind a chanting of odd, robotic commands, produce a modernist approach to Francis’ talking vocal style. Unfortunately, the idiosyncrasy of Francis’ lyrics is so deeply ingrained in the singer’s panicked rambling that the song loses any coherent message.

Without Deal’s restrained and understated bass, the guitars of Francis and Santiago swarm the album and often stunt Francis’ writing.

On the title track, “Indie Cindy,” Francis’ classic harsh and spoken verses return to the scene contrasted directly with the innocent, ethereal romance of the choruses.

“Indie Cindy/ Be in love with me/ I beg for you to carry me,” Francis sings in the chorus.

The lyrical themes behind “Indie Cindy” form a maze all on their own. From the melancholy tune of “Silver Snail” to the upbeat track “Snakes,” Francis seems too concerned with finding his perfect spirit animal rather than producing any message that is easily attainable for his listeners. Not that classic Pixies’ favorites, such as “Where Is My Mind?” and “Here Comes Your Man,” didn’t have idiosyncratic dilemmas, but “Indie Cindy” takes it to another level altogether.

In “Another Toe in the Ocean,” Francis turns a standard Pixies’ alternative rock song into a thematic wonderland of fairies and elves.

“Down on the shelf, an elf I saw/ I took his picture, he was waving/ I passed again and now they’re gone/ I think my picture is worth saving.”

Francis’ buried symbolism and lessons become internalized in the album to the point where it is almost too difficult to decipher his messages, even upon multiple listens.

The last few tracks on “Indie Cindy” do manage to return the album to a sound of rebuilding that the band needs to venture into, rather than further fall into cryptic jumbles of “indie” nonsense. For example, “Ring the Bells” brings a new meaning to the art rock musical genre that the Pixies find themselves knocking on the door of time and time again. Francis’ high, melodic choruses return hope to the album, and again in “Andro Queen,” the ephemeral nature of Francis’ voice sings to an extraterrestrial lover in Esperanto during the bridge, demonstrating the band’s arrival at an art rock sound.

The record’s closing track, “Jaime Bravo,” further signals this transition for the group, one in which the absence of Deal’s bass work doesn’t seem to be overcompensated with heavy, crunchy guitars.

Looking to a reinstatement of the Pixies as a force in alternative rock, “Indie Cindy” walks a tightrope between the band’s long-awaited return and the danger of losing its grace notes to mainstream prominence – or maybe that’s just how Black Francis wants it?