Pixies Explore Surreal Egg Balancing in ‘Magdalena’
Pixies just kicked off their 2014 American tour with new bassist Paz Lenchantin and with that they’ve unveiled a video for “Magdalena” from their new release EP2. It stars British performance artist and choreographer Nando Messias, who dresses up like a woman in the surreal video and has a very bizarre morning that culminates with him walking through a tunnel while balancing an egg on a spoon.
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The song was inspired by 318 Magdalena, an asteroid belt within our own solar system. “Now why the hell would I be writing about an asteroid?” Black Francis said in an interview with Pollstar. “The reason is because the producer of our album, Gil Norton, has been going on and on with his own science fiction narrative arch since we began this process of recording a new record or whatever – ‘Charles, you’ve been away in outer space. The Pixies have been away from earth for 20 years. You’ve been away on the Planet Of Sound, making your Pixies music. No one’s heard you for 20 years and now you’re back, stepped out of the capsule and this is what our record is about.'”
The band is spending the next five weeks playing American theaters, and then they head to festivals in South America and Europe through the mid-summer. They reunited in 2004 after a twelve year break, but until last year they had released virtually no new material. Founding bassist Kim Deal quit midway through the recording process.