Pixies perform three songs from 'The Night the Zombie Came' in The Current studio

Pixies perform three songs from 'The Night the Zombie Came' in The Current studioThe Current

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July 26, 2024

Ahead of their sold-out show at Surly Brewing Festival Field on June 20, the Pixies stopped by The Current studio to play a three-song set of songs from their upcoming album The Night the Zombies Came, out October 25 via BMG. The new album was produced by Tom Dalgety and is the band’s first with with new bassist Emma Richardson, who joined the group after the departure of Paz Lenchantin. Watch the full performance above.

In addition to their performance, band members Charles “Black Francis” Thompson and Joey Santiago shared some of the inspiration for the album, and some memories of performing their first reunion show in Minneapolis. Then, David Lovering joins for a magic trick. Read a full transcript below.

Interview Transcript

David Lovering: Hi, this is David Lovering from the Pixies. The Current is listener supported, and listeners like you can make all the difference, support public radio, and become a member today at the current.org.

Ayisha Jaffer: Hey, what's up? I'm Aisha Jaffer, weekday host here on The Current. And I'm hanging out with Charles and Joe of the Pixies. Thank you so much for sharing this space and time with us today at The Current ahead of your sold out show at Surly, we're so happy to have you here.

Charles “Black Francis” Thompson: Thanks for inviting us.

Ayisha Jaffer: And how are you doing? I just want to start with that.

Charles “Black Francis” Thompson: How are you today, Joe?

Joey Santiago: I'm pretty good. Now that you told us it was sold out? I'm better.

Charles “Black Francis” Thompson: Did you say we're sold out? Yeah. Oh, that's good.

Ayisha Jaffer: That's always good. Well, actually. So this is something I kind of want to talk about, like you guys are, in my mind, road warriors. You've always been touring. You have 70 shows on the docket right now. You've you've been doing this for a long time. And you've been doing it so long that maybe you're near like a Guinness World Record in it. And I used to be a tour manager. I know not everyone can do this. So I'm wondering, like, with so many shows, and so many more like on the way, what sort of drives you to keep hitting this stages at this rate?

Charles “Black Francis” Thompson: I don't know. But, but we do enjoy, we do enjoy it in general. And I don't suppose our experience of it has changed all that much, although it's probably been simplified, right? Over the years, right? Probably less partying, you know, more edification, more napping, you know. More trying to push your energy towards the show. So you do a good job, right? Yeah, you don't want to do a bad job. You know, we don't like doing a bad show.

Ayisha Jaffer: Right? No one likes? You know,

Charles “Black Francis” Thompson: We do care. Yeah. So yeah, we in general, I think that our ... but you know, we're like real, we're not really like, we're real people. And then we're not what you, we're not a we're not a virtuoso jazz band or something like that. So we're real. And so we're not perfect. And so we can have an off show. You know what I mean, and that does happen. And we don't mind that that happens, or sometimes just a song will be not the greatest rendition. That's what happened tonight, you know, but we do a lot of songs in a show. And we don't really stop to talk to the audience or anything. And we just play as many songs as we can in the time that is allotted to us. And we hope that we mix it up enough with our ancient repertoire with our more current repertoire. So that it's interesting for everybody, including us, and then, but everyone, we hope it gets their money's worth. And that's kind of it's real simple. You know, we just play we enjoy the playing. Feel free to interrupt me ...

Ayisha Jaffer: It's part of life is what it sounds like to me, which is really great to have that. But it's, you know, not everyone's built that way. So I think that's incredibly admirable. So I wanted to ask about it. I mean, the other thing in the show trend era, something new. Something welcome that seems to be happening is these residencies and you did residencies like, like residencies is on tour. So residency in London earlier this year, it sounded like you did. Was that did that feel any different? Did that feel something like?

lead singer of Pixies performing at Surly Brewing Festival Field 11 — Black Francis. Pixies performed with Modest Mouse and Cat Power at Surly Brewing Festival Field on Thursday, June 20.
Sara Fish for MPR

Charles “Black Francis” Thompson: I would say, actually not, only because we have a history of doing that, maybe not for the same reasons. Years ago, we wouldn't have done for example, a legacy... We wouldn't have been so presumptuous to do a legacy LP show, right when the LP was not even 20 years old, right? See them saying? But when the band did, for example, the we went on a hiatus for a long time, I guess we were broken up officially. But when we got back together when we started to perform, we found that some of our fans and, as our advisors told us, some of our fans in some cities like London in particular, but also places like Chicago and San Francisco, certain cities, our customers prefer or to go see us in a "more intimate venue." They weren't intimate to us, they're still 5,000 capacity theaters, but they were, I don't know, they were more punk rock or something. There was something about those more casual, right, maybe the seats were ripped out or something, whatever. There's some kind of vibe. Right. They're not some big corporate kind of, you know, 20,000 tickets or whatever. We could do the 20,000 tickets, but our fans would rather go see us in a more rock 'n' roll kind of environment. And so we we've, we've done a lot of these residencies over the years at the right time, or whatever, not every year.

Ayisha Jaffer: Well, you sort of touched on something I wanted to talk about, you know, you had this hiatus. 20 years ago, you reunited and the first show back was here in Minneapolis at the Fine Line. Do you? Do you remember that? And you remember anything from that time?

Joey Santiago: Oh, there was a line around the block. People had their ears to the building, trying to listen in. So I'm told I wasn't outside. Right. My brothers told me about this. And they came to the show.

Ayisha Jaffer: That would have been sneaky, though. If you were outside.

Charles “Black Francis” Thompson: That's good. His brothers came to the show, because one of them, Bob, is quite an accomplished guitar player as well. And I had forgot, "Hey," one of our bigger numbers, I suppose. You know, I just have a very simple little kind of lick to play. It's one of the few songs where I'm not just playing a bunch of barre chords. So I'm kind of going [making guitar sounds] this little kind of groove that I play and little fiddly bit, you know. And I'd forgotten how to play the fiddly bit. And he was I could hear the notes. It doesn't matter where I played on the guitar, it sounded wrong, because I didn't find the right intonation, the right voice, you know, and the right spot on the neck. And so Bob Santiago corrected me, he said, c'mere Charles, and he showed me how to play my song for the big reunion show. And then, you know, it saved the day, at least for that song. There I was, and then, you know, playing when I was supposed to at the right moment.

Joey Santiago: It was nice to hear that mistake through the building.

Ayisha Jaffer: That's incredible. Do you remember like, just because you know, you're in Minnesota. So I have to ask the question. Was there a reason that you remember that Minnesota was chosen as the first show to reunite in this city? Or if there's any sort of kinship between you in the Twin Cities?

Joey Santiago: I don't know. I think the whole plan was to hide up north in Canada. And you guys are pretty damn close. Yeah, sorry.

Ayisha Jaffer: No that's fine. It's okay. I'm all for honest open answers here.

Charles “Black Francis” Thompson: It was the warm up to our warm up. But you know, but it was announced though, I suppose it was announced. So it wasn't a secret or anything.

Ayisha Jaffer: You have new music out now after two years. There's a double A side "Que Sera Sera" and "You're So Impatient." We're thrashing "You're So "Impatient" on the air. We love that song and "Que Sera Sera" is like a classic. So I'm wondering why this classic was chosen to be reinterpreted? What was it about this particular song?

Joey Santiago: It was for a TV series called From that wanted a theme song, or a redo of "Que Sera Sera." Oh, in a harmless angle. That's the way I understood it. And I think that's ...

Ayisha Jaffer: Achieved. Great. So the horror theme seems to be a theme to the new album. This is ahead of the new album, The Night the Zombies Came, which I know has been in the catalog in the past, there's been stories, darker stories, darker folktales, things like that. What's the jumping point? Or was there a jumping point or catalyst for the theme on this new album of like horror and sci-fi? Or did it sort of just happen organically?

Charles “Black Francis” Thompson: Well, probably the thing that Joey referenced was something that we initially were approached about, we did that way. Well, before the record, was this kind of horror show. It wasn't zombies, but they were kind of flesh-eating, or something I can't remember now, but it was a scary show, you know. And then when we made the record, we weren't thinking about the "Que Sera Sera" number being on there. But as it turned out, I think I noticed in a couple of the scratch lyrics for early draft of lyrics, there might have been like us, using the word zombie, just as a cultural reference. Not zombie songs, right, per se. But using that kind of language, even in the song "Impatient," sort of referencing a little bit of a certain kind of movie culture, I guess, late-night movie, right?

Guitarist of Pixies performing at Surly Brewing Festival Field 01 — Joey Santiago. Pixies performed with Modest Mouse and Cat Power at Surly Brewing Festival Field on Thursday, June 20.
Sara Fish for MPR

Ayisha Jaffer: Well, I'm really looking forward to listening to it now. Tom Delgety. You referenced him as well. He's someone you've worked with as a producer since 2016's Head Carrier and he's been named, I think David named him the fifth Pixie. What is it about him that earned that title and keeps you coming back to Tom?

Charles “Black Francis” Thompson: We don't mind his company. He doesn't seem to mind our company. His ideas seem to be good. Even if even if you were to "disagree" with something, you can't, I can never knock his ideas as being ridiculous, right? So even if I don't, even if I'm thinking something different, it's like, I see what he's saying, you know, there's a lot of, I don't know. He's, he's mellow. He's quiet in the studio, he's very low-key. We find him to be a very good manager of time.

Ayisha Jaffer: Well that sounds like a magic experience to have someone like that on your side. To make these albums and to be together for for so long and choose to continue to hit the road and do all of this together is really, really admirable and huge. And everybody obviously sees that I think that your sold out show many sold out shows ahead of you, which is very exciting. Well, before I let you both go, is there anything else you want our listeners to know? About this upcoming record about shows or just in general, anything that's coming up? Or just, you know, advice?

Charles “Black Francis” Thompson: Advice?

Joey Santiago: Talk about vulnerable questions.

Ayisha Jaffer: I'm sorry.

Joey Santiago: No, that's a good one.

Charles “Black Francis” Thompson: Any musical recommendations?

Joey Santiago: Take naps without guilt.

Charles “Black Francis” Thompson: Naps without guilt. I like that.

Joey Santiago: I mean, you deserve a nap. You don't have to work all the time. Or think.

Ayisha Jaffer: Yeah, yeah. This is true. And this is something that's ingrained in our culture. So okay, take naps without guilt. Take it from the Pixies. I think, actually, we're gonna have David also join us. Right, as David has been bringing some joy to listeners with his other skill as a scientific phenomenalism. Yeah, come on over.

Joey Santiago: Come on, Dave. I'm gonna go take my nap.

Ayisha Jaffer: Thanks, Joey. Hi. Well, so you've been doing magic monthly. Yeah. And that's been like connecting with your fans in a next-level way. You're nice enough to grace us with a magic trick, I heard.

David Lovering: Okay. Oh, let me get a deck of cards.

Charles “Black Francis” Thompson: I’ll watch. I don't think I've seen this one.

Ayisha Jaffer: You might be part of it. Who knows?

David Lovering: But let me think what I could do. Ayisha just touch one card. This one right here. I'll say, Okay, I'm going to show you the card. It's upside down. See the camera. Back on the deck. I'm going to shuffle up the deck. In fact, I'll shuffle up even worse. I'm going to shuffle them face up and face down, the biggest magician's nightmare. There is, bear with me right now. Okay, okay, right there. Okay. So right now, in this deck, they showed cards are face up, their face down, face up, face down all over the place. Even back to back, it doesn't matter. But if I just snap my fingers like this, hopefully now the deck just rights itself. Wow. With the exception of one card here in the middle, I hope.

Ayisha Jaffer: Oh my God. It is. Such a multitalented group.

David Lovering: A lot of free time.

Ayisha Jaffer: Thank you all for joining us. Thank you, David. Thank you, Joe. Thank you, Charles. Thanks for the Pixies being here at The Current. The Night the Zombies Came is coming out sometime before Halloween.

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