A reference to both their songwriting style (quiet verse, loud chorus, repeat) as well as their partitioned career, loudQuietloud documents the reunion of The Pixies, who broke up in 1992 after achieving modest success. After the split, the Pixies’ artistic impact and notoriety grew considerably, thanks in part to a guy named Kurt Cobain, who famously claimed that all he was trying to do musically was rip them off. For years, people wondered why the Pixies, a band with such talent and potential, would decide to call it quits on the doorstep of fame and fortune. Personal conflicts, mainly between hefty frontman Black Francis (a.k.a. Frank Black) and bassist Kim Deal (who also fronted the Breeders) were assumed to have torn the unlikely combination of musicans apart. After posthumously achieving iconic cult status this decade, the Pixies finally decided to reunite.
Winning unprecedented access to the band during their 2004 reunion tour, loudQuietloud directors Steven Cantor and Matthew Galkin present a portrait of four extremely different and downright weird people who seem to have little in common save for millions of fans who literally worship the ground they rock on. Between cleverly-edited concert footage from all over Canada, the U.S. and Europe, we see Kim Deal accompanied everywhere by her twin sister Kelley-which is pretty surreal, as they come off as two halves of the same crazy consciousness-and drummer Dave Lovering’s struggle with returning to the spotlight after twelve years as a semi-successful children’s magician with an obsessive interest in metal detectors. Not necessarily for the uninitiated, this DVD is an entertaining and insightful must for any Pixies fan.
Rating VVVV
