Iconic alternative rock band The Pixies have just released the music video for “On Graveyard Hill”, the first single off their upcoming seventh studio album, Beneath The Eyrie. The album will be released by Infectious Music and BMG Rights Management on September 13th, and is their first release since Head Carrier in 2016.
The video, directed by Kenneth Anger, includes much homage to the 50s and 60s. It starts with an eerie voiceover, questioning what may or may not be in the listener’s future. There is a young woman, surrounded by psychedelic posters (including one Pixies poster behind her), listening closely to the voice through a radio. As the voice finishes, she calls a hearse on her phone on an app that is clearly meant to spoof Uber. Then, the Pixies song kicks in. The woman starts to dance in excited anticipation of her hearse’s arrival. Each lyric is punctuated with a guitar stab in between lines. Anger uses an intercut with frontman Black Francis singing the lyrics, the woman’s ride in the hearse, and diverse psychedelic imagery to maintain the eerie tone. The hearse then drops off the nameless woman at a psychic, and as Francis sings, “Her hair is black and gorgeous”, things really get crazy.
The intercuts continue, with one particularly potent image being dripping blood on a woman 100% covered in white during the psychic appointment. The psychic kicks off a magical journey through a number of colorful and often kaleidoscopic situations that all seem to stem from her crystal ball. The video ends with a provocative shot of the young woman falling into a body of water and floating there calmly, covered in dark red light, as Francis laments, “And soon I will be killed”.
The Pixies will be embarking on a worldwide 34-date tour this fall. The first show will be the Daydream Festival in Pasadena, California on August 13th (the only August date), and the tour will conclude at the Coliseum in Galicia, Spain on October 26th. The Pixies have remained much more active than many 90s era alt-rock bands, having released two albums in the last five years (Beneath the Eyrie will be their third) and maintaining busy touring schedule. Their second album, Doolittle, recently achieved the group’s first Platinum sales certification.
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