- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
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Sep 26, 2016Pixies’ full acceptance of the shifts in their schema only further solidify their inimitable identity. The exultant result: Head Carrier, a new classic.
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Oct 5, 2016In a cleaner, more mature, concerned-about-its-blood-pressure manner, Head Carrier revisits Pixies’ prime, primal age, melodically pumped and squaring up confidently to its admittedly formidable forebears.
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Q MagazineSep 23, 2016What makes Head Carrier work is that the Pixies see, to have rediscovered what they're great at. [Nov 2016, p.109]
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MojoSep 15, 2016A colourful, catchy and quietly impassioned record. [Oct 2016, p.90]
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MagnetOct 18, 2016A pleasant surprise. [No. 136, p.56]
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Oct 4, 2016It’s not Pixies as you’d like to remember them, but for the first time in years it sounds as if they’re actually enjoying themselves.
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Sep 30, 2016All in all, Head Carrier is a collection of lessons, experiences, sounds that exemplify the essence of fun rock ’n’ roll.
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Sep 29, 2016While it feels like Pixies are still figuring out how to continue their legacy, Head Carrier's best moments suggest they're heading in the right direction.
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Sep 26, 2016While nothing on this album will replace anything from Doolittle or Surfer Rosa in your affections, bangers such as Classic Masher and Um Chagga Lagga detonate with a palpable sense of fun that leaves you in no doubt who the authors are and that it’s a better album than Trompe La Monde.
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Kerrang!Oct 6, 2016Two albums into their 21st century reunion, and the unhinged genius of early albums Surfer Rosa and Doolittle is largely lacking, replaced by the not unpleasant sound of old friends having a blast. [8 Oct 2016, p.52]
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Oct 5, 2016Head Carrier is far from triumphant, it’s by no means a failure.
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Oct 3, 2016Head Carrier is a far more coherent album than Indie Cindy though (hardly surprising, as the latter was effectively a group of EPs welded together) and while it may not be a record to inspire the generations as their previous work did, there’s enough evidence that some of that old spark is still flickering.
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Sep 30, 2016Their past is a double-edged sword, but that doesn’t prevent Head Carrier from having its own unique strengths.
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Sep 29, 2016The follow-up is looser and less burdened by the past.
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Sep 28, 2016When not vainly trying to live up to their legacy and instead embracing middle-age, the Pixies end up doing a much better job of not tainting said legacy. Head Carrier's best moments are straightforward, midtempo, guitar-based alt-rock.
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Sep 28, 2016Head Carrier is an altogether more convincing affair than 2014’s comeback album Indie Cindy, the intervening months of roadwork having helped relocate the band’s classic mode.
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Sep 27, 2016Pixies have played it straight and stayed in their lane, their once vital weirdness cast into the laundry basket like a vampire costume post Halloween. Head Carrier is 80% classic Pixies. But it turns out the missing 20% is as fundamental as oxygen is to air.
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Sep 15, 2016There’s not enough adventure to make this truly feel like Pixies; it lacks the sense that the wheels might come off any minute. Lenchantin, for her part, holds her own, especially on All I Think About Now, but her new colleagues need to rediscover the urgency and ambition that defined their best work if they’re ever going to match it.
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UncutSep 15, 2016The absence of Kim Deal--who left in 2013--continues to be felt: her natural warmth and goofy charm would add welcome nuance here. [Oct 2016, p.37]
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Sep 26, 2016While Head Carrier may fall far short of lightning bolts raining down from Olympus, there’s enough reason to believe Pixies have a bit of thunder in them yet.
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Oct 6, 2016The truth is, if Head Carrier had arrived as the umpteenth Frank Black solo album, little about it would seem amiss. But coming from a band whose legacy was built on shock-and-awe transgression, Head Carrier feels overly pleasant and pedestrian.
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Sep 30, 2016Unlike Indie Cindy, Head Carrier knows exactly what it is. Whether that’s something we’ll remember is another discussion entirely.
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Sep 28, 2016Head Carrier sounds far more restrained and lifeless than it should be.
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Sep 27, 2016There’s no denying that Head Carrier generally veers between sounding like an exhausted tribute to their former configuration to feeling something akin to a disposable Frank Black solo effort via a few conciliatory tracks.
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Sep 26, 2016While Head Carrier may right some of the wrongs of Indie Cindy, it still remains a distinctly average affair from a band once considered the best band on the planet. Too often this sounds like a younger band's best impression of Pixies, or worse, a parody of themselves.
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Oct 3, 2016It’s impossible to latch on to any of these songs as evidence of any late-period reflowering.
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Sep 29, 2016Head Carrier continues down the cul-de-sac first entered on 2014’s lukewarm Indie Cindy, largely comprising chugging, artless alt rock.
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Sep 15, 2016At best, Pixies are just the masters at a game that is no longer interesting. Songs stray so far from the raw energy of Surfer Rosa that Head Carrier could easily be mistaken for any number of hair product soaked '80s metal. [Aug-Sep 2016, p.75]
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Oct 19, 2016Musically, there are too many things going on and too few things going on. Every track sounds more or less the same, and every track sounds like a poor heyday tribute.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 31 out of 46
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Mixed: 13 out of 46
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Negative: 2 out of 46
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Sep 30, 2016
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Oct 12, 2016
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Oct 12, 2016