For a drummer, David Lovering sure does have a beautiful set of pipes.
Chatting over the phone disgustingly early in the morning US time, the indie rock titan and longtime member of the Pixies shows off the polished tones one would usually associate with television commercial voiceover work. There’s a kind of all-American richness to his speaking voice that is almost distracting, and every one of his sentences comes rounded off with its own suggested exclamation point. “My day’s going very well thank you!” Lovering begins. “Nice and sunny! Can’t complain!”
His confidence is particularly unexpected given that, at the time of his speaking with the BRAG, the Pixies’ new record Head Carrier is but a short few weeks away from release. Isn’t he worried about how the record is going to be received? “It’s funny: it’s less nerve racking than with Indie Cindy,” Lovering says, sounding like a man who has never once has his nerves racked in his life. “I’m very excited about Head Carrier. I’m very happy with it. We had a lot of time to work these songs out, and to really like these songs and really hone them.
“I mean, the only reason I mention Indie Cindy being scary is because that was a record that we had a little trepidation with, given it was the first record after a long, long time. There were nerves in that we felt we were going to be scrutinised, and didn’t know necessarily what we were going to have to do, even though we were happy with it.”
Given the rocky reception Indie Cindy initially was dealt – at least by the critical establishment – it’s tempting to assume that the band took more time with Head Carrier in order to put their critics’ doubts firmly to rest the next time around. But Lovering stresses that the new record’s extended writing period came about more due to good luck than anything else. “Having all that time … was a luxury we haven’t enjoyed since we were a band in the ’80s,” he says. “Back then we had a rehearsal room and we would rehearse often. We would play shows, so we knew those songs inside out.
“With Head Carrier we got seven weeks to rehearse the songs, so we really got to know them too. That was just a luxury. That was a case of going into the studio, having a little more time with the songs, and having that space to just know what we were going to do with them.”
The band are known for their lineup changes – in recent years, bassist and songwriter Kim Deal left, leaving room for The Muffs’ Kim Shattuck to fill the void, until Shattuck too moved on and Paz Lenchantin stepped in. But despite the alterations in personnel, Lovering says the group’s songwriting process has never really changed significantly over the years, and their creative process is buoyed by the group’s frontperson Black Francis (real name Charles Thompson).
“What’s interesting is, a lot of the songs – and I will say this about a lot of the songs we’ve written since the Pixies began – they stay pretty much to as Charles has written them. The only thing that really changes is whether it’s A-B-A-C or if it goes from chorus to verse, or if we have a double chorus. All those arrangements – that’s really all that changes.
“I mean, I was told recently that it’s 30 years that we have been doing this together,” Lovering continues. “I don’t know if that’s 30 years continuously, but we’ve had a long time doing it. There may be some discussion about writing, but it’s basically just jamming along and someone will occasionally say, ‘No, don’t do that; do this,’ or even, ‘What you’ve done is just fine.’ Or no-one says anything. There’s not a formula. It’s just whatever happens, happens. I mean, I’ve never written a Pixies song because I don’t think that I could ever write one better than Charles.”
That said, as far as Lovering is concerned, one of the only ways to test whether a song has got legs is to play it live, and so far he has relished the opportunity to unveil some brand new Pixies songs in front of the fans. “We did a short tour – a festival tour – about a month-and-a-half ago,” he says. “We played four Head Carrier songs every night. And what was fun about it was, because people didn’t know the songs, we could really work them. They’re fun to play, and they’re not only fun to play, they translate well as live songs. It’s about seeing them in a whole other light than on the record.”
But for Lovering, the real joy came when the new tunes were branded with that undeniable sign of approval: the good ol’ fashioned mosh. “In my position as a drummer, I have a nice position on a podium. I may be up the back, but I’m a foot off the ground, so I can see everything that’s going on. And on this recent festival tour, I saw moshing!” Lovering lets out a hearty guffaw, the kind of sound that wouldn’t seem out of place in an advert for bespoke furniture. “I haven’t seen moshing go on in years. And that was something that was always quite commonplace at Pixies shows, so that was very nice to see.”
[Pixies photo by Travis Shinn]
Pixies perform atHordern Pavilion on Tuesday March 7, 2017.Head Carrier is out now through Pixies Music.
