It isn't that I think The Pixies are overrated; that isn't quite accurate. There are at least a dozen Pixies tracks that I'd never turn down. But I do have a series of impressions that coalesce into something close to a sense of overratedness. And given the pandemonious clamor for Pixies Reunited! tickets, it seems timely to air them now. First, their quality was always spotty (largely due to epic self-indulgence). How many Pixies albums do you listen to all the way through, fingers never hovering near the skip button? One? Second, I believe their enduring appeal rests as much on Black Francis being an enigmatic kook as on anything else. Third, the snowballing adulation that's developed since their theatrical, sniveling implosion has almost completely obscured the fact that, when the Pixies were actually producing albums, few felt about them as is now compulsory to feel: they were, let's remember, considered roughly as important at the time as Dinosaur Jr. Yes. Dinosaur Jr. Contrasted with, say, Mission of Burma. Who have also reformed, are also touring, who have released an album 10 times better than it has any right to be, and who are enjoying roughly one-tenth the hype The Pixies are. And that, readers, verges on travesty.