Some people really need to calm down a little and give themselves a moment to get over what they perceive to be the auto-destruction of the Pixies’ legacy.

Once you’ve ascribed a certain cultural importance to a band, one that is necessarily ephemeral and era-specific, any reunion releases they manage to cobble together are always going to be problematic, and that’s before we even get to the less than universal acclaim afforded to their final pre-breakup album, or the band’s seemingly total dysfunctionality leading to repeated bass player departures / sackings.

No, EP2 - like EP1 before it - is not a return to Surfer Rosa or Doolittle. It’s not even a return to Bossanova. There is some callback, however: the intro to Blue Eyed Hexe does make it hard not to think back to Trompe Le Monde, although I don’t remember so much cowbell back then. As for the rest, it kinda sounds like Pixies to me, even if Kim-lovers and proper music journalists will try to tell me the whole thing is a pointless and grubby exercise in tarnishing the good times: Greens and Blacks is definitely not a better Gigantic no matter how hard Black Francis tries to convince anyone otherwise, but with Kim Deal gone, you can’t blame a guy for wanting to replace a set-closing staple; Magdalena is Havalina with heft and new consonants; only Snakes doesn’t immediately speak of old Pixies, and oddly enough it’s the weakest track, meandering gently towards the EP’s conclusion.