Night of the living Pixies
The Night the Zombies Came
Happy Halloween! Today J. Bennett joins us to write about the new zombie themed Pixies album and takes a humorous look back at the band's preoccupation with the living dead throughout their career.
He previously wrote for Hell World about his favorite Soundgarden songs.
For more on zombies also read this piece by Jonathan Katz. “For colonizers, zombie stories are powered by fears of revenge or contagion by the people they conquered,” he wrote. “For the colonized, the zombie retains its older connotations: fear of abduction, assimilation, and losing one’s soul.”
This piece will go out in the next edition of the newsletter.
Night of the living Pixies
by J. Bennett
When there’s no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth.
—Dawn of the Dead (1978)
The new Pixies album is called The Night the Zombies Came. On it, Black Francis and his retinue hail the titular undead in all their rotting, shuffling, brain-eating glory. Which is appropriate, given that the band itself rose from the grave in 2004 after 11 years of dormancy and, like, bad blood.
Of course, bad blood is the genesis of the zombie. Contamination. Infection. You’ve seen The Walking Dead. Or at least Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video. Even if you haven’t, you know the drill. They’re gross, they’re hungry, they often travel in packs. If you’re trying to kill one only a bullet to the head will do. Luckily they’re also slow. Or at least they were until 28 Days Later upped the ante with turbo zombies.
The thing about zombies is they tend to make more zombies. It’s no coincidence that many of the notable bands Pixies influenced also broke up (or went on “hiatus”) only to self-exhume for cash and prizes: Smashing Pumpkins, Weezer, Nirvana. Okay, maybe not Nirvana. But Dave Grohl is at least part zombie.
The Night the Zombies Came features zombies of both the Night of the Living Dead roaming-the-countryside variety and the Dawn of the Dead shopping-mall/consumerist-allegory variety. On “You’re So Impatient,” Black Francis takes his girl to the mall to catch a horror flick. Ever thoughtful, he’s brought a box of wine for the occasion. But she isn’t feeling it.