Loud Quiet Loud - A Film About the Pixies
The Pixies' 2004 reunion was the biggest thing that's happened in alternative rock since Nirvana, and filmmakers Steven Cantor and Matthew Galkin were there with their cameras, trailing the genre's progenitors across North America and Europe as they reclaimed their legacy. Besides beautifully shot concert footage featuring all or part of 15 songs, we get a view inside the Pixies' heads. All four were managing complex personal issues when they reunited. We see frontman Frank Black (a.k.a. Black Francis) dealing with a bump in his solo career, bassist Kim Deal juggling sobriety and creating new Breeders songs, guitarist Joey Santiago grappling with parenthood and financial issues, and drummer David Lovering rescued from his post-Pixes life as a struggling magician. They make no secret that they're doing it for the money, but learn along this tour of the world's stages and their psyches that there's a magic in their knotty, raw music that has the power to sustain their audiences and--for a time, at least--themselves. There's bonus footage of the movie's leftovers, but little of it's interesting except for the band's visit to modern psychedelicists Sigur Ros's Iceland studio. Über-producer/guitarist Daniel Lanois provides the film's beautiful, glacially paced incidental music.--Ted Drozdowski