Pixies Dust

"I worry that I'm going to forget, like with 'Gouge Away,' I'm gonna think it's in G," Kim Deal says in Loud QUIET Loud: A Film About the Pixies (MVD Visual), providing just one example of how this 85-minute documentary shows the influential alt-rock band (whose 2004 reunion tour provided the impetus for the film) at its most tenuous personally. We are privy to Deal's drug and alcohol problems (she'd had more than a year sober when the film was shot), as well as an obvious lack of offstage interaction among the Pixies (dubbed "the four worst communicators ever" by Kim's sister Kelley, who accompanied Kim on the tour), and obsessed fans who play in Pixies cover bands and camp out at arenas for front-row seats to the band's shows. But more than that, we are witness to electrifying live performances of some of the band's best songs, including "U-Mass," "Caribou," "Wave of Mutilation," and "Hey." There is also footage of Black Francis at home with his family, and he could just as easily be talking about playing the Pixies' beloved songs for an audience for the first time in more than 12 years when he tells his wife, "We're following our children in a corn maze."