WHEN YOU have created the albums Surfer Rosa (1987 ) and Doolittle (1989 ), seen them achieve classic status, and their songs continue to find new generations of fans via TV, film, and indie clubnights, there can only be one thought: follow that.
The truth is, that is an impossible ask. Since reforming, the Pixies have made some worthwhile music, though none can match the classic, influential, work of the late 1980s/early 1990s, when the Boston quartet took the quiet/loud formula Led Zeppelin invented in 1969, turned it on its head, and then inside out, and fused it with punk, alternative rock, and surf, into something wholly new.
Beneath The Eyrie is, however, the most solid, consistent, and assured of the post-reformation albums. 'On Graveyard Hill' has some of the fire, drive, and rage of old, and could fit comfortably and pleasingly into a Pixies' concert setlist. 'Silver Bullet' has a melancholy grandeur; while 'Daniel Boone', named after the American explorer, is an atmospheric, mini-epic, with audible nods to the Surfer Rosa era. It also hears Black Francis delivering a restrained, vulnerable vocal, which feels entirely appropriate to the song's reflective mood.
