Could a new Pixies classic be on the way? Joey Santiago wants to get into that ‘frame of mind'
'The Pixies — anchored by David Lovering's hard-driving drumming and Kim Deal's booming bass, and marked by Joey Santiago's distorted guitar crunches — have become a terrific live band, almost able to match the sonic rewards of their albums,' Steve Hochman wrote of the occasion.
'What counts is that the combinations of music and words and yelps strike nerves,' he added. 'And, in truth, there's more to many Pixies songs than that.'
Indeed, there was and is. But unfortunately for fans of the Boston foursome, 'Trompe Le Monde' would be the last album they heard from the group before its untimely demise just two years later, or so they thought.
Shockingly, the band would get back together more than a decade later, swapping bassist Kim Deal for Emma Richardson. Fans were greeted with a reunion tour that saw them featured in both Coachella and Lollapalooza, leaving them excited for what was to come. But, it would be another exhausting wait of 10 years until they got their hands on 'Indie City,' the group's fifth studio album released in 2014.
It's now an additional 10 years later, and the band has come full circle. They will once again play the Palladium on June 20 and 21 — the former will see them perform 'Trompe Le Monde' in its entirety, just as they did 34 years ago.
'It's great because there are songs in it that we hardly play,' Santiago says of the album. 'So those are going to go back in rotation, and it gives us more songs to choose from.'
'The only problem is switching guitars. There's a lot of switching guitars around,' he says with a laugh.
He's sat comfortably in what appears to be an office space. Atop his head is a green and white hat, with 'LA' embroidered on its front. He's got a white beard , which makes sense for the 60-year-old father of two.
It's a story all too familiar to the '90s greats — his bandmate, Frank Black, also has two kids, and so does drummer Dave Lovering.
'After our third year, pre-breakup, it became where it [touring] was just exhausting,' Santiago says, via Zoom. 'No matter what age you are, it's exhausting. … I took my kids [to shows] just for three days in the same damn time zone, they were exhausted.'
The key to keeping up between all the touring and album releases, according to him, is to listen to new music.
'You gotta feed the kitty or whatever,' he jokes.
He considers discovering music to be 'part of the work,' and a crucial step to generating new ideas for the group. He says he's been frequenting Wet Leg radio recently: 'It's new, it's fresh and it doesn't suck.'
It's been an important factor when it comes to their latest releases, such as their newest project, 'The Night the Zombies Came,' which was released in October 2024. Unlike other post-breakup albums, this one allowed Santiago much more freedom when it came to laying down tracks. It shows between his 'long solos' and extra guitar work, which he says felt like he had returned to playing as he did when he was a kid.
'It's what I would have done if I were still in middle school or high school,' he says. 'That kind of thing.'
And yet, fans have still been critical of the band's style since their reunion, fearful that they may never return to the sound that once shot them to fame on albums like 'Surfer Rosa' and 'Doolittle.' It seems to put the group in a tricky spot, constantly trying to evolve while also drawing upon their roots.
'It does sound different, and hey, we're different people,' Santiago says.
He seemingly takes it all in stride, noting that while he is trying to 'get back in that frame of mind' seen on those aforementioned albums. 'Everyone's got to be on the same page,' he said.
'In the grand scheme of things, it's damned if you do, damned if you don't,' he continues. 'If we're too different, we're gonna get flack for it. If we make 'Doolittle' part two, we're gonna get flack for it.'
As for the future, the band simply plans on continuing to do what it has always done best: making rock music. The members don't look likely to make any dramatic transitions into any other genres, and don't pay much mind to ongoing trends within the music industry. They're your classic 'Buddy Holly setup' with an 'occasional splash of keyboards.'
'If you want guitar music, you can go to a few bands that will provide it, and we're one of them,' he notes.
And perhaps it is this very approach that has helped them to maintain their early fans while still appealing to younger audiences. That, or social media, where songs like 'Where Is My Mind?' and 'Monkey Gone to Heaven' are reposted hundreds of thousands of times across various platforms. Though it also may be worth giving a nod to that final scene in 'Fight Club.'
'It feels good,' Santiago says. 'We're lucky.'
It's even been so infectious that at home, he can no longer shy away from his alter ego comfortably.
'They're starting to get what I'm doing,' he says of his kids, with a smile. 'They started getting at me two years ago.'
'They're of that age, where they'll go places and hear the Pixies. Their friends will say, 'hey, have you ever heard of the Pixies? They're really good.' Professors are mentioning the Pixies. Parents are mentioning the Pixies. So they know, and they like it.'
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Los Angeles Times
5 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
Is Hollywood inspired by the CIA, or the other way around?
LANGLEY, Va. — At CIA headquarters, beyond the handsome granite seal on its lobby floor and a wall of stars carved in honor of the agency's fallen, experts are at work in the complex tasks of spycraft: weapons-trained officers, computer engineers, virologists, nuclear scientists. But there are also storytellers, makeup artists, theater majors and ballerinas — Americans who probably never thought their skills would match the needs of a spy agency. Yet the CIA thought otherwise. Though it rarely gets the spotlight, there's a revolving door of talent between the country's premiere intelligence agency and its entertainment industry, with inspiration and influence often working both ways. The agency is targeting professionals at the intersection of arts and technology for recruitment, CIA officers told The Times, and continues to cooperate with entertainment giants to inspire the next generation of creative spies. This month, the agency is assisting a New York Times bestselling author on a young adult book examining the foundations of the CIA laid during World War II. Scenes from a major upcoming film production were just shot at its headquarters, a logistical feat at an intelligence campus tucked away in the Virginia suburbs behind rings of security perimeters, where officers roam cracking down on Bluetooth signals. Another popular streaming TV series will be back at Langley to film this fall. But their collaboration goes far deeper than that, officers said. Creative minds in Hollywood and the entertainment industry have long had a role at the Central Intelligence Agency, devising clever solutions to its most vexing problems, such as perfecting the art of disguise and harnessing a magician's ability to cast spellbinding illusions. Indeed, in the 1950s, a magician from New York named John Mulholland was secretly contracted with the agency to write a manual for Cold War spies on trickery and deception. These days, the officers said, creative skills are more valuable than ever in such a technologically complex world. 'You're only limited by your own imagination — don't self-censor your ideas,' said Janelle, a CIA public affairs officer, granted the ability to speak under her first name at the request of the agency. 'We're always looking for partners.' David McCloskey, a former CIA analyst and author of 'Damascus Station' and other spy thrillers, offered several theories on why the agency might be interested in fostering a robust relationship with Hollywood, calling it 'a two-way street.' 'There definitely have been operational applications for espionage,' McCloskey said. 'It's probably the exception to the rule, but when it happens, it's compelling.' It's easy to see why CIA leaders would be interested in Hollywood, he said, in part to shape impressions of the agency. 'But their bread and butter business is receiving people to give secrets,' he continued, 'and part of that is getting close to people in power.' 'The closer you are to Hollywood,' McCloskey added, 'that's a really interesting 'in' to having a lot of interesting conversations.' Some of the CIA's most iconic missions — at least the declassified ones — document the agency's rich history with Hollywood, including Canadian Caper, when CIA operatives disguised themselves as a film crew to rescue six American diplomats in Tehran during the Iran hostage crisis, an operation moviegoers will recognize as the plot of 'Argo.' ''Argo' was almost too far-fetched to even believe,' said Brent, an in-house historian at CIA headquarters. 'It's almost more Hollywood than Hollywood.' Canadian Caper was both inspired by Hollywood and relied on Hollywood talent. Agent Tony Mendez had been a graphic artist before joining the agency and helping craft the mission. Another key player was John Chambers, the makeup artist who gave the world Spock's ears on 'Star Trek' and won an honorary Oscar for his trailblazing simian work on 'Planet of the Apes.' He was awarded the CIA's Intelligence Medal of Merit for his work on the covert rescue effort. Just a few years before, Howard Hughes, then one of the world's richest men and a tycoon in media, film and aerospace, agreed to work with the CIA to provide cover for an effort by the agency to lift a sunken Soviet nuclear submarine off the floor of the Pacific Ocean. Deploying Hughes' Glomar Explorer under the guise of mineral extraction, the CIA was able to salvage most of the sub before The Times broke a story blowing its cover — 'the story that sunk our efforts,' in CIA parlance. And another mission was made possible thanks to a device invented by a professional photographer — a gadget that later became the inspiration of an over-the-top scene in the blockbuster Batman film 'The Dark Knight.' In Project Coldfeet, CIA agents gathering intelligence on a Soviet station erected on a precariously drifting sheet of ice in the Arctic needed a reliable extraction plan. But how does one pick up an agent without landing a plane on the ice? The answer was the 'skyhook': Balloons lifted a tether attached to a harness worn by an agent high into the sky. A CIA plane snagged the tether and carried the agent off to safety. In 'The Dark Knight,' Batman makes a dramatic escape deploying the same kind of balloon-harness contraption. CIA leadership often says that acceptance into the agency is harder than getting into Harvard and Yale combined. Yet the agency still has challenges recruiting the type of talent it is looking for — either in reaching those with unconventional skills, or in convincing them that they should leave secure, comparatively well-paid, comfortable jobs for a secretive life of public service. It is no easy task managing work at the agency, especially with family, CIA officials acknowledged. Deciding if and when to share one's true identity with their children is a regular struggle. But Janelle said the CIA tells potential recruits there is a middle ground that doesn't require them to entirely abandon their existing lives. 'People don't have to leave their companies to help their country and to work with CIA,' Janelle said. 'People come here because they love their country and know they can make a difference.' Janelle is part of a team that regularly engages with creatives who want to portray the agency or spies as accurately as possible. 'Some producers and directors reach out and they do care about accuracy,' Janelle said, 'but they ultimately pick and choose what's going to work for the film or show.' CIA analysts have also been known to leave the agency for opportunities in the entertainment industry, writing books and scripts drawing from their experiences — so long as they don't track too closely with those experiences. Joe Weisberg, the writer and producer behind the television series 'The Americans,' and McCloskey, who is working on a fifth novel focused on U.S. and British intelligence, were both part of the agency before launching their writing careers. And as CIA alumni, they had to submit their works for review. 'There's a whole publication and classification-review process,' Brent said. That process can be a bit of a slog, McCloskey said: 'They quite literally redact in black ink.' But it is far more difficult for nonfiction writers than novelists. 'There could be bits of tradecraft, or alluding to assets, or people at the agency, which are clear no's,' McCloskey said. 'But with novels, it's not that hard to write them in a way to get them through the review board.' Try as they may, studios often repeat the same falsehoods about the CIA, no matter how often they are corrected. Officers and agents aren't the same thing, for one. And as disappointing as it may be for lovers of spy thrillers, the majority of officers are not licensed or trained to carry weapons. 'One thing Hollywood often gets wrong is the idea that it's one officer doing everything, when it's really a team sport here,' Janelle said. 'Zero Dark Thirty,' an Oscar-winning film released in 2012 about the hunt for Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, was widely acclaimed but criticized by some within the intelligence community over the credit it lends a single, fictional CIA analyst for tracking him down. McCloskey sympathizes with the writer's dilemma. 'I can't have 35 people on a team. From a storytelling standpoint, it just doesn't work,' he said, acknowledging that little in the field of espionage is accurately captured on screen, even though there are plenty of former spies available to work as consultants. 'There's no lack of sources to get it right,' he said. 'It's that the superhero spy — the Jack Ryans and Jason Bournes — are pretty much the Hollywood representation of espionage.' However inaccurately glorified and dramatized, the agency hopes that Hollywood's work can keep the revolving door moving, inspiring atypical talent to join its ranks. 'We have architects, carpenters, people who worked in logistics,' Brent said. 'People might not realize the range of skill sets here at CIA.' And as Canadian Caper showed, sometimes spycraft requires stagecraft. It's possible that what's needed most to complete the next mission won't be oceanography or data mining, but costume design. Or maybe another ballerina.
Yahoo
21 hours ago
- Yahoo
J-Pop Trio Number_i Just Wants to Make Music They Love
Japanese trio Number_i is outright earnest about the way they love making music. Comprising members Sho Hirano, Yuta Jinguji and Yuta Kishi, the chart-topping J-pop act is wading into the U.S. music market. Last year, the group joined management company and music label 88Rising's Futures stage lineup at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. It was their first U.S. performance and first major music festival as Number_i. More from The Hollywood Reporter As Oasis Kicks Off Their Reunion Tour, the Band Gives Fans Fresh Merch and Clothing Collabs Derek A.E. Fuhrmann, Co-Writer of Phillip Phillips' "Gone, Gone, Gone," Dies at 44 Oasis' Liam Gallagher Apologizes for Using Racial Slur: "Sorry If I Offended Anyone" The three-member group performed their first featured festival set in the U.S. at 88Rising's Head in the Clouds Festival at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. The performance came on the heels of their latest release God_i, featuring a lead single of the same name. Kishia produced the track, which debuted at No. 1 on Billboard Japan's Hot 100 chart. The track conveys the message of 'wishing to give the courage to take a step forward,' according to a release. Number_i stopped by The Hollywood Reporter days after their Head in the Clouds set to talk about God_i, the differences in performing for U.S. audiences and how they hope the world sees them. How was performing at Head in the Clouds? This was your second U.S. performance after Coachella last year, correct? JINGUJI Coachella was our very first big music festival event. We were not really used to that kind of atmosphere and everything, but we've done a lot of festivals in Japan now. With that experience, we were more relaxed and we got to enjoy [performing at Head in the Clouds] a little bit more. You quite literally have the No. 1 song in Japan [at the time of this conversation]. How are you feeling about your latest release, ? HIRANO We definitely appreciate the fans around the world, and this time we wanted to give back to the fans and people who enjoyed our music, so it had that special feeling to it. I'm wondering if there was one particular song of yours that you found fans at Head of the Clouds this past weekend really enjoyed the most or resonated the most with? KISHI AND HIRANO We heard from some crews and staffers that when we performed Bon, a lot of people they weren't at the stage [originally], but then they just came from behind [to see the performance], so I guess it did attract a lot of people that way. But it was a hot day and toward the end of the day we were all tired. We were blacking out a little bit, so our memories might be a little blur. All three of you obviously have your own individual taste in music. How does that factor into the music you make as a group? HIRANO Obviously, we grew up listening to different types of music. We grew up in different environments and everything, but we've been together for over 10 years now, so we have one solid core that's kind of common in all of us. I think that it comes together that way. Do you feel that over time you've been able to understand one another in a way that only you could, almost in your own shared langauge of music? KISHI When I listen to their demo version, it's really always refreshing and sometimes surprising. But then I would understand, oh yeah, he's going to like that. There's certainly a difference in the way audiences enjoy concerts when you play domestically in Japan and here in the U.S. How much of that have you noticed? HIRANO [The audiences] are different. The American audience — even though they don't understand the lyrics because our lyrics are sometimes in Japanese — they enjoy the sound and then the vibe of it. Then they express that excitement physically, so that's very exciting [to us]. Going off of that, I think it's always really powerful when music transcends language barriers. How does it feel as an artist to play in another country where fans might not speak the same language, but they're still singing along or connecting with the music? HIRANO We believe that music goes beyond borders, of course, and good music, good anything, can be understood and shared by people across the world. We just make good music, whatever we believe in and whatever we are happy with, and we'd like to spread that to more and more people. As a performer, you're going to be perceived by the public in a way that is usually out of your control. But you're a creative and an artist, and I assume there's a way you'd like people to perceive you in that area. What is that for you? JINGUJI It's a tough question. Not just artists; we all get misunderstood or misjudged at times, so that doesn't bother us too much. What we are focused on is making something [where were can] just be ourselves, create what we like to create and then pursue that. Eventually, if we can make a lot of people that support us happy, then that's all we care about. Best of The Hollywood Reporter From 'Party in the U.S.A.' to 'Born in the U.S.A.': 20 of America's Most Patriotic (and Un-Patriotic) Musical Offerings Most Anticipated Concert Tours of 2025: Beyoncé, Billie Eilish, Kendrick Lamar & SZA, Sabrina Carpenter and More Hollywood's Most Notable Deaths of 2025
Los Angeles Times
a day ago
- Los Angeles Times
Helen Schulman walks us through the short stories in her new book, ‘Fools for Love'
Helen Schulman is not afraid to make you squirm. Across her long and distinguished career as a novelist and short story writer, she has fearlessly explored the awkward collisions between our private and public selves, between what we present to the world and what we conceal from even our closest companions. Her 2011 best-selling novel 'This Beautiful Life' dared to plunge headfirst into the shark-infested waters of the internet while most of us were still basking in the glow of the web's shiny benevolence. 'Fools For Love,' her latest collection of stories, finds Schulman's characters weighing the past against the present, looking for redemption in the wrong places and occasionally coming up roses. (Please note: The Times may earn a commission through links to whose fees support independent bookstores.) When it comes to ideas, what becomes a short story and what becomes a novel? A lot of my ideas spring forward from something Henry James called the 'germ' — the bit of overheated gossip, the newspaper article, an eavesdropped conversation on a public bus, a story told by other parents when you are both pushing toddlers on the swings in a playground, which injects itself into the writerly imagination and grows — often over large swaths of time. Sometimes these obsessions entangle, too. That's what happened in [my story] 'The Revisionist.' My husband had a college buddy over for dinner who told us this story about a friend of his who was walking home from work when a strange man ran into his own house and slammed the door in his face. Why? What? Who? The reality was somewhat pedestrian — the intruder was a drunken next-door neighbor, who I guess had overshot. But the anecdote stuck with me. For some of your characters, the past is ever-present — they are fated to live with the sum of their choices, and it engenders a lot of regret. Can you speak to that? My all-time favorite writer is William Faulkner. You must be familiar with his quote from the novel 'Requiem for a Nun': 'The past is never dead. It's not even past.' I sometimes feel this way about existence in general, like each and every moment in a lifetime is somehow equal, and that as one ages the moments accrue and tag along wherever one goes. Certainly in my own life I don't sweat my big choices; I'm happy about them. I think a person does the best they can with what they know at the time. But I'm infinitely curious about what could have happened instead. There is a lot of status anxiety in your work — not just financial status, but marriage, career — the things you think will align pleasingly in middle age but often don't. My husband and I are both working writers. The marriage works; the financial status has gone in and out. I'm not sure I always looked to middle age as a time of 'pleasing alignment,' but I also didn't think the world would be as effed up as it is now. Some of my characters get older and wiser; some are just more wrinkled, taller kids. But there is a lot of endurance over time in these stories — love, friendship, workplace passions. I would venture to say that most of my characters have real lives, and some very real satisfactions within the stresses that inevitably go along with them. There are also secrets in your stories. Are we as sick as our secrets, or are they simply unavoidable? Everyone has secrets. In 'The Revisionist,' the protagonist even keeps secrets from himself. One of my closest friends, after the death of her parents, found out that one was married before and that the other had two other children with someone else. Now everyone is dead, and so we don't even know if the spouses knew this about each other. There is nothing pedestrian about 'ordinary lives.' We all roil and we all excite. I feel like one of my jobs as a fiction writer is to dive down beneath the surface. In the story 'My Best Friend,' there is a shocking act of violence. Why did you take it in that direction? That story is about two men, one an up-and-coming-actor and the other a want-to-be novelist, who fall into a deep brotherhood while sleeping with the same woman. In fact, they each marry her — sequentially, of course. At some point, the friendship goes south; the protagonist, Jake, and Jeannie, the woman, have kids together and his career dries up. The first husband, Phil, becomes a very successful TV showrunner and producer. Out of pity, he hires Jake to be a character in one of his nighttime soaps. Jake starts to become an audience favorite, and Phil tortures the character on the series. All their pent up homoerotic attachments and jealousies explode in a 'manly' brawl, which I see as tragicomedic, at the end of the story. The love story is theirs, after all. Kurt Vonnegut has a quote about, when one reaches advanced middle age, life becomes an epilogue. That is a hard thing to carry. Do you feel that this is the case? I guess I'm thinking about your story 'In a Better Place,' which revisits the characters from the book's titular story in old age. No, honestly I don't. That story is really about the celebration of long love between the couple at the heart of the story, its healing powers and sustaining comforts. What may make this all feel epilogue-y to you (not a word, I know) is because these two people feel happy and fulfilled by their marriage. … My own artistic hope is to go as long as I can. I live to write! Valerie Castellanos Clark weighs in on Charlie English's 'The CIA Book Club,' about how Polish citizens fought Russian communism with books. 'As with the best spy novels, we know the good guy is going to win … but how English gets us there is exciting,' Clark writes. Melina Sempill Watts calls Josh Jackson's book, 'The Enduring Wild: A Journey Into California's Public Lands' a timely book for a state that is in danger of losing its most precious public resource: 'Jackson's assertion that we are all landowners is a clarion call amid a GOP-led push to sell off public land.' Leigh Haber raves on Amy Bloom's latest novel 'I'll Be Right Here.' 'As Bloom has demonstrated throughout her stellar literary career,' writes Haber, 'she can train her eye on any person, place or object and render it sublime.' Jim Ruland calls Megan Abbott's latest thriller, 'El Dorado Drive,' a novel for our present age of anxiety, propelled by Abbott's masterful narrative drive and her skill at 'rendering the hot, messy inner lives of young people.' This week we are perusing the shelves at Now Serving, a cozy bookshop devoted to the culinary arts and located on the ground floor of Chinatown's Far East Plaza. Co-owner Ken Concepcion gives us the scoop on the hot goods. What books are selling right now? 'Umma,' 'By Heart,' 'Fat + Flour,' 'Salsa Daddy' and 'The Choi of Cooking.' What food trend are customers excited about right now? Being that we are in L.A., there has always been a demand for vegetarian and vegan titles. The interest in plant-based cookbooks that delve into specific cuisines such as Filipino, Vietnamese, Mexican and Japanese has definitely grown over the years, and the diversity of voices has been wonderful to see. There needs to be better representation for Ecuadorian, Guatemalan and other Central and South American cuisines as well — there is a real demand for it. Why do you think cookbooks are still important, despite the ubiquity of recipes online? As with anything that you can find online, recipes are no different. There are thousands upon thousands available. Most of them are copycat recipes. We think cookbooks are still unparalleled in that they can deliver a narrative, historical context and incredible imagery and stunning design in a world that is more reliant on technology than ever. Cookbooks at best are functional objects of art that can be then passed down from generation to generation. They can often become keepsakes, time capsules and family heirlooms.
