CURIOUS title, this, could they mean hod-carrier? Certainly in places it's a very workmanlike effort.

Tenement Song, for example, is too much like REM, while All The Saints wouldn't sound out of place in a hotel elevator.

That's not to say this is a bad album; Um Chagga Lagga and Oona are from the band's top drawer and Baal's Back is more like it with Black Francis's manic caterwauling.

Then there is the title track, which displays some of the band's trademark clattering mayhem. But the rest is a bit too slick and too much by numbers.

Pixies were a breath of fresh air when they burst on to the scene. Off kilter, off piste and all the better for it. Since reforming, guitarist Joey Santiago says of new recruit Paz Lenchantin: “She’s awesome, now everything is just so light." Light? Pixies?

What happened to the bizarre lyrics about Biblical violence? What a waste of talent, sings Francis, half way through the album. Harsh, but fair.
 

Pixies play Leeds Academy on November 30.