After 13 years, we have a brand new single from my favorite rock band ever: The Pixies.

Like many true Pixies fans, I absolutely hated them the first time I heard them, back when I was a wee lad of 15. This initial reaction, and the resultant exultant turnaround, seems to be a common experience among their truest Pixies appreciators.

I was lucky enough to catch their last ever tour (as headliners) before they broke up, but this was a mixed blessing, as it was in support of the highly suspect ‘Trompe le Monde’. And then it was all over.

Sure, a few good Frank Black and Breeders albums followed, with some truly great, inspired moments in them to be sure. But it wasn’t quite the same. And then the Breeders devolved into the Amps, and Frank hooked up with those nasty, nasty Catholics. And then, it was all really over.

Or so we all thought.

Fast forward to summer of 2003, rumours buzzing that the Pixies have been informaly jamming together, then, a tour announced, huzzah! After some drama, they even added a Toronto date, and after some more drama, I scored me some tix, oh yes.

And this was enough, really. More than I’d ever dreamed, truly. But now we have a brand spanking new song?! Would the magic be back after all this time? The fantastic recording of their Minneapolis concert certainly suggests so. Or would ‘Bam thwok’ simply be a sad, grasping, coulda woulda shoulda?

So I made with the clicky and… it’s good. After a few more listens… it’s great! The opening initially had me doubting, but damn, it butters my toast. It’s like Trompe le Monde, the Amps, the Catholics never happened, and they’re just picking up from the last good bit, and sweeping on forward, because in light of everything else, it’s probably just the beginning.

It’s suddenly evident why none of the spin-off acts were quite the same, obvious in the driving stacatto drumline, and that wonderful surf-fusion guitar wail; exultant and melancholic at the same time. The Pixies is a magical sum, but a sum of all four parts, and everyone does their bit here, Frank-Francis-Charlie, Kim, Joey, and David. You need them all to get Pixies, no matter who’s stepping up to the mic.

And on ‘Bam Thwok’ it’s Kim, for the first time since ‘Gigantic’. Apparently, if the catty music press is to be believed, who should get to sing was the key schism that split the band. Looks sorted now, doesn’t it?