Pixies, “Doggerel.”

It’s been 18 years since the Pixies reunited. That’s more than twice as many years as they spent gouging away as alt rock vanguards from 1986 ’til their sudden split in 1993. It’s hard to undersell their legacy. Kurt Cobain famously referred to his band as a Pixies cover band and Radiohead’s breakthrough single “Creep” featured an arrangement seemingly straight out of  Surfer Rosa.

Nearly two decades into their rebirth, that legacy still casts long shadows of expectation about what the Pixies “should” sound like. As Black Francis puts it, “Why do you come here lately after all that we’ve been through?”

That inquiry might be directed to a soon-to-be ex-lover on Doggerel’s opening track, “Nomatterday,” but it suggests another question: What do we come to Pixies albums for in 2022?

The temptation to look for familiar touchstones of those early albums is hard to resist and there’s plenty of those scattered around Doggerel. Paz Lenchantin’s creeping bass lines drive menacing verses and Joey Santiago’s guitar still rips through songs like Ennio Morricone on a surfboard in outer space. But as Doggerel reveals itself, it often trades formulas for chemistry. Some of it is explosive and some of it fizzles, but it’s hard to fault Doggerel for the way it subverts expectations.

Maybe it’s artistic evolution, or maybe it’s the fact that the Pixies spent a lot of 2019 on the road with Weezer, but much of Doggerel carries a confident Blue Album swagger that takes some getting used to. The Pixies always wrote pop; they just tended to cover it in their signature sonic shrapnel. Songs like “Haunted House” and “Get Simulated” have a certain Rivers-Coumo-like charm to them that’s hard to resist. And that’s fair play considering the debt Weezer owe to the Pixies. (Listen to “Sweater Song” and “I Bleed” back to back for a reminder.)

“The Lord Has Come Back Today” and “Thunder and Lightning” are pleasant, breezy and upbeat. Those are terms that seem strange to attach to Pixies music, but they coast by on equal parts band chemistry and confidence. Folk rocker “Pagan Man” features a fantastic vocal performance from Black Francis evoking John Fogherty over a 1970s Laurel Canyon vibe, existing miles apart from anything the band has explored previously.

But Doggerel is still a Pixies album, so it has its fair share of surrealist explorations, unexpected tempo shifts, and hallucinatory streams of consciousness. On “Dregs of the Wine,” Francis barks out references to Redd Foxx, LSD and The Queen of Thailand over a classic thudding bass line and explosive Pixies™ chorus.

“Vault of Heaven” has a surf guitar hook and “la-la” backing vocals that could’ve been lifted from a Bossa Nova session in 1990. The title track features Joey Santiago’s ghostly guitar winding through a sparse funk arrangement while Frank Black growls a world-weary narrative of wandering from place to place. It’s a gorgeous synthesis of the album’s pop aesthetic with a bit of the creeping unease of early Pixies.

“Who’s More Sorry Now” is one of the tracks that doesn’t quite live up to the rest of the album, but it features a line that might be the key to meeting Doggerel where it is: “Don’t split your sails on me/ ‘Cause it just don’t matter,” he sings, referencing a rapidly departing boat.

Maybe that’s the point. Perhaps after all these years, it’s time to let go of the past and let the Pixies evolve. They may not be driving the culture the way they once did, but they are driving toward the band they want to be here and now. In finding their footing on Doggerel, the band might be one step ahead of its audience, but that’s OK because the Pixies are dead. Long live the Pixies.

Follow Skott Bennett at Twitter.com/skottbennett.