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Two weeks after announcing the departure of bassist Kim Deal, Pixies have taken a step closer to fulfilling the promise of releasing their first album since 1991's patchy Trompe le Monde with the appearance of the excellent Bagboy. The song is the band's – now featuring, on this song at least, Black Francis, David Lovering, Joey Santiago and bass from Francis associate Jeremy Dubs – first new material since 2004's Bam Thwok, which was released to coincide with their reunion shows in 2004. According to a statement released alongside the song on the band's website last Friday, Bagboy was written by Francis in a Starbucks "about a hundred feet from where, 25 years ago, I composed some of the lyrics to an old Pixies song called Break My Body" and was originally started a few years ago. "There are some demos I made with Joey and David a few years ago in Los Angeles, related to a film idea that still has yet to see the light of day, although work on the music continued," he explains. Opening with an electronic drum pulse and Francis' half-spoken, half-sung drawl, it's a brilliantly scratchy, sporadically ferocious reminder that few bands know how to play about with a song's dynamic quite like the Pixies. There are even reminders of their past in the Kim Dealesque backing vocals that arrive a third of the way through. There's also a video, which features the titular boy popping off to the shops before returning home to have a bath in a load of cereal and enjoy what looks like the best solo house party ever.



You can download Bagboy for free from here. The band will also be touring Europe starting on 29 September.