Emma fits in…she feel like a Pixie, says Black Francis on new bandmate ahead of latest album
BLACK FRANCIS is lounging on his veranda, taking in the autumn sunshine.
The Pixies frontman’s black-framed shades give his round, hairless head an inscrutable air.
“Sorry, let’s take a break!” he bellows as a truck thunders past.
“The New England Ice Cream Corporation is driving by,” he continues more calmly as the roar subsides.
“OK, it has gone now, where were we?”
Peace reigns once more in the leafy New England town of Amherst where the singer resides.
However, this scene of domestic bliss (when not interrupted by the region’s “premier distributor of frozen foods”) is not quite what it seems.
That is because of the dark and disturbing themes we are covering in honour of Pixies’ ninth studio album, The Night The Zombies Came. Among topics up for discussion during this endlessly surreal video call are the living dead, headless chickens and hanging out in Welsh graveyards.
On a lighter note, how many American rock stars gush about English traditional folk singer Shirley Collins? This one is among a select few, I imagine.
As followers of Pixies will know, Black Francis is the stage name of Charles Thompson IV, born in Boston 59 years ago.
In the late Eighties, he formed the band with Joey Santiago (guitar), Dave Lovering (drums) and Kim Deal (bass and vocals).
They released four strikingly original albums between 1988 and 1991, Surfer Rosa, Doolittle, Bossanova and Trompe Le Monde, noted for combining menace with beauty, loud with quiet, dissonance with harmony.
Highly influential and renowned for being Kurt Cobain’s favourite band, the original Pixies imploded in 1993.
Francis toned down the full-throated holler employed on songs like Debaser and became Frank Black the solo artist.
Then, in 2004, Pixies reformed, even if Deal didn’t hang around for the new albums which began appearing in 2014 with Indie Cindy.
When you get older, you write things, even if it is just a rhyme or a couple of words, that seem more poignant and world weary.
Maintaining the tradition of a female bassist, they have just recruited their third, Emma Richardson, a Brit who forged her career in Band Of Skulls.
Now we have The Night The Zombies Came, the strangest, most varied and captivating of the five albums to appear since Pixies got back together.
Francis suggests it’s the work of a wiser artist despite its wild atmosphere.
“Look, I’m 59 years old. When I was young, let’s face it, I sang a lot of things that were bulls**t,” he confesses.
“I didn’t have the bruises and the scars to really own what I was singing.
“But, when you get older, you write things, even if it is just a rhyme or a couple of words, that seem more poignant and world weary.”
As ever, it’s hard to pin down Pixies music, which is exactly how Francis likes to keep it.
“We’ve always had an eclectic mix of styles — for better or for worse,” he affirms.
“We don’t like being cornered into a particular genre but we try our very best to come up with a synthesis between different forms.”
He adds: “We”re not a punk band but we like punk music,” then he repeats the sentence several times but replaces punk with “folk”, “heavy metal”, “blues” and “reggae”.
Francis draws on his other creative outlet, painting, to make his point . . . “now it’s blue, now it’s green, now it’s red, now it’s yellow and so on”.
The title The Night The Zombies Came comes from the song Jane, which is driven by acoustic strums framing lyrics delivered in a nursery rhyme-like monotonous chant.
With Halloween fast approaching, you might well assume that a zombie-themed album was intended.
But, in his singular way, Francis maintains: “It was not an ambition, not an agenda, not an overlord.
“It just felt as if there was a zombie sitting on a chair in the room.”
As work on the album progressed, he noticed the presence in more than one song of the tormented creatures trapped between life and death.
Francis poses the question: “What could I possibly be referencing psychologically with a zombie title?
“Certainly we can start with the global pandemic,” he says in answer to himself.
“We all went through it. A lot of people died and a lot of people had their lives completely turned upside down.”
‘We’re at existential precipice’
As for calling the album The Night The Zombies Came, he adds: “Every time we make a record, I comb through all the lyrics. The title has to have some sort of ‘je ne sais quoi’ and I usually find three or four options.
“This time, The Night The Zombies Came, as silly as it sounded, was the only one that seemed right.”
So, I venture, is Francis a fan of zombie movies — that endlessly popular form of horror film that stretches back to the 1930s?
“Not since I was a much younger man but I am aware of it culturally,” he replies.
“I was in Japan, maybe ten years ago, and that American zombie TV series (The Walking Dead) was playing.
“I was jet-lagged and couldn’t sleep. So I binge-watched it.”
Francis says: “We can’t seem to get away from monster movies. Maybe it says something about where humanity finds itself in our post-Hiroshima and Nagasaki world.
“We have had wars. We have had pandemics. We have had genocides. We have had all these horrific things.”
These events, he suggests, explain the repeated appearance of zombies in film and literature.
“I presume it’s because we’re standing at some sort of existential precipice, staring into the abyss,” he decides.
This brings us to the madcap song Chicken, which also references zombies, and again explores the notion of the living dead.
Francis admits that the expression “headless chicken” was on his mind, a metaphor for the human race “rushing mindlessly to non-existence”.
I learned about Woody Guthrie from them but I never became a real folk musician. I didn’t go deep but it touched me.
During the pandemic, when his Pixies routine had been upended, he kept “a flock of chickens in the backyard — in my little suburban setup here”.
“Even though I didn’t slaughter them, I’ve been returning to the statement, ‘Oh, I’m just running around like a headless chicken.’
“As humans, we’re fascinated by that horrific transitional moment when the chicken’s head has been removed.
“The body and even the head are still responding, still moving and maybe even still conscious.”
Francis says he was fascinated by that “micro moment” but adds with a smirk, “apparently a decapitated chicken lived for a couple years in the 1940s”.
Next, we talk about Primrose which opens The Night The Zombies Came and is described as “a folk song”.
It serves as a stark contrast to the high octane punk blast, You’re So Impatient, which follows it.
Francis says: “I’ve been listening to folk music in a very natural way most of my life.
“When I was nine or ten, I hung out with the Boston Folk Song Society.
“I learned about Woody Guthrie from them but I never became a real folk musician. I didn’t go deep but it touched me.”
Then, during Covid, when Francis was “doing a lot of painting”, he went “down the rabbit hole” of listening to the late English folk guitarist Davey Graham.
‘Fabulous Shirley Collins’
He says: “I stumbled on a record that Davey made with the singer Shirley Collins and I became obsessed with Shirley.
“She is so spellbinding. Even the records she’s made in recent years as a much older person are fabulous.”
Francis, noted for his vocal histrionics, was impressed by Collins’ “non-emotive” delivery.
“I hate to use the word neutral because it sounds like I’m calling her boring,” he says.
“But she relies on the song’s story and doesn’t inflect it with emotion.”
Francis discovered that a lot of songs “are super f***ing dark. Scary stuff!”
He marvels at how Collins sings disturbing lyrics deadpan . . . “this happened, then this happened and that’s how we all died”.
“Rock and roll is the opposite,” says Francis. “It’s more snarky but since hearing Shirley, I realised it’s OK if I do a folky song.
“Primrose begins with the line ‘Good morning Brigid, I can hear the bell.’
“That’s a reference to St Brigid’s, the beautiful church near me, and the bell rings every morning at eight o’clock,” reports Francis.
“Sometimes I go to the morning service. I was there today actually. It’s very Catholic, very ritualistic.”
The primroses of the song grow in a nearby forest where Francis searches for firewood to burn in his fire pit.
“There’s a stream there with moss along its bank like a bed,” he says. “During the pandemic, I would lie down and hang my hand in the water.”
As is the case with so many folk songs, water and drowning loom large.
“I guess you could say it’s a death song,” says Francis. “Much thanks to Shirley Collins!”
St. Brigid’s isn’t the only church to be mentioned on the new Pixies record.
I was walking around with my girlfriend, hanging out in the graveyard and wandering around the town.
I Hear You Mary is set in Wales, specifically the border town of Monmouth on the River Wye, home to St Mary’s Priory Church.
Francis knows the area well because of the band’s sessions at nearby Rockfield Studios, where everyone from Black Sabbath to Oasis have recorded.
The song tells of daffodils among the tombs in St Mary’s graveyard and the glorious rapeseed fields in the neighbouring countryside.
Francis says: “We’ve spent a fair amount of time in Monmouth. The last time we were there, I was very grouchy, throwing all kinds of temper tantrums.
“Usually I’m pretty easy to get along with in the studio, but I was being a ‘difficult artist’ that week.”
That said, Francis says he was “calm enough to absorb the environment”.
“I was walking around with my girlfriend, hanging out in the graveyard and wandering around the town.
“The high street goes up a hill and I found out that they used to drive sheep up there to the slaughter.
“So I have a lot of imagery of Mother Mary, of growth in the fields, of flowers and lambs, of slaughter, of that graveyard — of life and death. Monmouth is very symbolic for me.”
Before I let Francis get back to his idyllic New England afternoon in the sun, I ask him about new Pixies bass player, Emma Richardson, who replaced Paz Lenchantin earlier this year.
He says producers Tom Dalgety and Gil Norton had both worked with her, and “both, independently of each other, said we should work with Emma”.
“So we hired her without even meeting her. We just said, ‘Please finish the record with us and then come on the road with us.
“That’s what she did. We haven’t looked back. It’s great having a Brit on board. She totally fits in and she feels like a Pixie.”
And why the tradition of a female bassist? “I always liked Talking Heads,” answers Francis.
“They had Tina Weymouth and they were smart, arty and cool.
“So I thought, ‘Maybe I need a Tina to play with my David Byrne. That was how it all started.”
He may compare himself to Byrne but I think you’ll agree that Black Francis, Charles to his friends, is a true one-off.