Black Francis-who, in a first on a Pixies album, is joined by Joey Santiago as a co-writer on two songs, the shimmering, jangly “Pagan Man” and churning “Dregs of the Wine'-writes simply and cleanly, skills honed over the years where he was leading the workaday combo Frank Black & the Catholics. There’s little hidden here: “There’s a Moon On” gallops forth with nocturnal urgency, and “Who’s More Sorry Now?” has the vaguest hint of melancholy to its titular phrase. Once purveyors of dadaist rock, Pixies now opt for craft, constructing sturdy songs whose appeal lies in their directness. Pixies operate at a much smaller scale than the Rolling Stones, of course, and modesty is also crucial to Doggerel.

Like the Stones, Pixies survive because they’re road warriors, playing old favorites for audiences who consider themselves lucky to finally hear “Where Is My Mind?” performed live. It’s recognizably Pixies music but it’s broader, bigger, and slicker: It’s the alt-rock Voodoo Lounge, the record the Rolling Stones released some 30 years after their debut. David Lovering lays down a thick backbeat that allows Lenchantin just enough elasticity to suggest a hint of a groove. Black Francis never attempts to strain to replicate his trademark wail Joey Santiago’s guitar squalls are controlled and colorful.

The band sounds at ease, even agreeable, as middle-aged rockers. There may be no surprises on Doggerel but, crucially, there’s no pandering, either. Indie Cindy and, to a lesser extent, Head Carrier buckled under the weight of a band attempting to live within the confines of its legacy: They spent their time hitting marks, pretending to be the group they once were.

Once she left, eventually to be replaced on bass and vocals by Paz Lenchantin, Pixies immediately started making records that suggested maybe Deal was right to believe the band should’ve stuck to oldies. He followed this notion throughout the entire first decade of the Pixies reunion, releasing six albums during a period where Kim Deal held firm to her stance that the band shouldn’t record new material.

“Human Crime” doesn’t appear on Doggerel, yet it served its purpose: It freed Black Francis from the idea that there was a division between the songs he wrote for himself and those he penned for Pixies. Tom Dalgety, the producer and engineer who has been behind the band’s boards since Head Carrier, plucked “ Human Crime” from the stash and had Pixies transform it into a bouncy little number that felt looser than Beneath the Eyrie, the 2019 album in which the Kim Deal-less incarnation of the band finally found its footing in the recording studio. Francis had been stockpiling original tunes written in the vein of 1950s country music with the intention of cutting an Americana album with Bobby Bare Jr., a latter-day member of Guided by Voices who once toured with his own Pixies tribute group. The seeds of Doggerel lie in a genre exercise. Pixies choose to embrace the slowing of their step, using it to accentuate the way leader Black Francis chose refinement over exploration as he learned to sneak his idiosyncrasies into familiar song forms. The band relies on chops instead of accidents to thrill, favoring production that’s clean, burly, and without a lick of grit-a sound that moves with the weight and deliberateness of middle age.

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