NEW YORK — The undead, Medieval-themed suburban restaurants, the mall. Druidism, decapitated chickens, rebirth. Church, sheep slaughter, science fiction. These are a few, not all, of the topics touched upon on the Pixies' 10th studio album, ''The Night the Zombies Came."
A 13-track kaleidoscopic collection of songs — their first with new bassist Emma Richardson — the album veers from folk to punk to psychedelia and back again and in between, never neatly fitting into a particular formula.
In truth, ''The Night the Zombies Came'' plays out more like a film, each song a small vignette. Frontman and visual artist Black Francis, born Charles Thompson, says that's particularly evident in their slow or midtempo songs — the ones where they value space and reverb — an energetic choice as well as a musical one.
''When you play, like, surf music, but you kind of dress it up in a little bit of a tuxedo or whatever, and you end up coming up with something that's a little more spaghetti Western, right? Or more and you know, Ennio Morricone,'' he says. ''We're not very good at any particular genre. We like all of the genres of so-called popular music.''
That's evident across ''The Night the Zombies Came." Eclectic folk moments pull influence from Shirley Collins; Black's chanty monotone on ''Jane (The Night the Zombies Came)'' is all Baxter Dury meets Sleaford Mods, though he says the song is ''a mixture of Lou Reed and church music.'' The quirky palm-muted guitar pop of ''Hypnotized'' is loosely written in the style of a sestina, a poetic form. Closer ''The Vegas Suite'' is based off the 1950s standard ''Que Sera, Sera.''
''There isn't really a unifying theme,'' Francis says — and there really hasn't been one on any of the Pixies' albums.
But listeners, of course, are free to draw their own connections: Like the one that might be made between ''Ernest Evans,'' a rollicking burst about American singer Chubby Checker, best known for ''The Twist" and ''Kings of the Prairie," inspired by Mexican troubadours touring the West Coast. There, the image of an exhaustive performance schedule — the open road, an endless sea of motel doors and gigging — feels like a thematic throughline in an album of unexpected turns.
And it works: the Pixies have always been outsiders; it's what makes their music connect.