loudQUIETloud - A Film About The Pixies
Weak doco that I’d say would fall under the category of ‘fans only’, except I watched this with a Pixies fan who also thought it was pretty fucking weak.
Following the recently reformed group on their American and European tours, the film is little more than some nicely shot live footage and semi-interesting backstage banter. Hell, they probably should have just cut the chatter and added in more songs and made it a concert DVD, but instead the filmmakers try to push a story where there just isn’t one to be found.
Well, maybe that’s not quite right. There could be a story there, but since the film gives you no background on the band whatsoever, any tension-filled moments carry no real weight – it makes the massive mistake of never delving into why the band broke up in the first damn place. Maybe it’s just that there are so many other great band documentaries out there, from DiG! to Some Kind Of Monster, that you expect some real fireworks between band-mates, and wait for the inevitable meltdown to happen…but here the closest we get is pretty much a single moment where the drummer, possibly on drugs (SHOCK! HORROR!), keeps drumming after the rest of the band have finished a song.
The doco also tells us The Pixies are one of the most influential bands in the world without qualifying it – there are no interviews with bands who say they were inspired by them, nor with rock journalists who lavish them with praise. Now I’m not debating their place in music history, but as someone yet to really discover their music I left the film knowing exactly the same amount about the band that I knew going in: Sweet fuck all, and a good sign of a doco that is not.