The biggest difference between Come On Pilgrim and the Pixiesʼ first full-length LP is not the length (actually, the LP is still fairly short, only beating Pilgrim by about ten minutesʼ worth), but the presence of a bona fide producer in the face of Steve Albini — in fact, the album pretty much established the reputation of both the band and Steve, who was hitherto much better known as the leader of Big Black, but would henceforth be known almost exclusively for his talent in making vicious and ferocious bands sound even more vicious and ferocious.
Curiously, Steve would go on to make fairly scathing remarks about how these sessions went, implying that the band was only too happy to be recording for a big label and followed his directions like a bunch of lap dogs (I guess that Mr. Albini only has the proper respect for those who regularly tell him to fuck off). But then again, he probably did give them exactly what they wanted — teaching the band how to make those guitars sound like high-tension wires, broken glass, or flames of Hell depending on the circumstances, based on his own career in Big Black. As a result, the album has much more crunch and punch than Come On Pilgrim, without losing either its masterful pop hooks or its post-modern flavor.
The new tactics are heard from the very first beat, when David Loweringʼs drums crash down on the senses with the mammoth energy of a John Bonham — and without a single trace of those all-pervasive electronic echos which now make all mainstream Eighties records so tightly attached to their own and no other decade. In between those crushing drums, Kimʼs thick and lumbering bass tone, and the half-punk, half-psychedelic guitar riffs, ʽBone Machineʼ actually sounds like one: a very heavy, very squeaky, very crude, but perfectly functioning bone machine. (I wonder if the song title could actually influence Tom Waitsʼ title for his own groundbreaking 1992 album — admittedly, Tomʼs idea of a «bone machine» differed fairly significantly from the Pixies, with much more emphasis on percussion, but still, too much of a coincidence). It is not a particularly favorite tune of mine — beyond establishing that sound, I do not think it makes that much of a point, and its acappella hook ("your bones got a little machine...") is emotionally vague; but as a prime example of how it would be all working out, and how it would be nearly impossible to ascribe these songs to any particular genre, itʼs fairly great.
That said, Surfer Rosa, even more so than its shorty predecessor, shows that it is very hard to pin any Pixies tune to any sort of specific «point». Analyzing Black Francisʼ lyrics is usually even more hopeless than analyzing classic Dylan — they typically have an impressionistic flow, where randomly snatched out images of fuzzy personal experiences, contemporary political realities, and trashy pop culture elements may have a billion different interpretations. The melodies to which they are set, combining diverse and disparate genre elements, will disconcert and befuddle the mind quite harshly — traditional emotions such as joy or anger all seem to have a place in the Pixiesʼ musical philosophy, but you can never really work out their relations to each other or their underlying basis. Try and ask yourself the question: «Okay, something like ʽRiver Euphratesʼ is great, but what exactly makes it great, and what does ʽgreatʼ even mean in this context?» Then you will understand the creative pain in which I find myself while writing this review.
Perhaps it might be better to try and unwind this confounding ball of yarn if we first lock on to something really short, simple, and accessible — like, say, ʽCactusʼ, a two-minute ditty that would later be resurrected by David Bowie for the Heathen album in a much louder and epic arrangement. In the original, bare-bones version, with its jagged guitar and bass chords and slightly whiney vocal delivery, it sounds more like something which, say, Neil Young could have considered for After The Gold Rush — a mini-anthem of loneliness and yearning, expressed from a dangerously deranged mental perspective. A simple blues-rocker with some subconscious musical ties to early Seventiesʼ slow boogie à la T. Rex (they say that the idea to surreptitiously spell P-I-X-I-E-S in the middle of the song was inspired by a similar move on one of Marc Bolanʼs tunes, and I am pretty sure the connection must have come to them from the musical arrangement of the song in the first place), but with Neil Youngʼs rather than Marcʼs spirit inhabiting the melody. In fact, I think it actually shares a couple of its menacing chord changes mid-verses with a similar thing on Neilʼs ʽWhen You Dance I Can Really Loveʼ — another tune that crosses loving yearning with disturbing darkness. But the Pixiesʼ approach is playfully dark rather than disturbingly dark — the faster tempo, the quirkier vocals, the ridiculous lyrical imagery all implore you to not take things too deeply and personally.
And yet at the same time, it was hardly for nothing that Fincher would choose ʽWhere Is My Mind?ʼ for the credits roll to Fight Club. If there are at least a couple themes that tie together most of these songs, these themes would be introversion and insanity. If it seems to you that the music of the Pixies is way too silly and way too cheerful to have served as an obvious source of inspiration and admiration for Kurt Cobain, just realize that the key element tying together Pixies and Nirvana is a general sense of detachment from common reality and alienation from the hoi polloi, except that Nirvana would be angry at and condescending to the world at large, whereas the Pixies treat the world at large from the standpoint of a more David Byrnian paradigm — what are all these strange organic beings doing in this weirdly uncomfortable location? ʽWhere Is My Mind?ʼ is a fabulous example of that paradigm — from its eerie «lost deep in the forest» backing vocals to its «swimming» lead guitar line to its odd opposition between the screechy verse and the surprisingly quiet chorus (usually it is the other way around), it is the perfect personal anthem for the ever so slightly autistic loner, realising that there might be something wrong with his mind but being essentially at ease with it — after all, there it is, "way out in the water, see it swimminʼ", so itʼs basically all right in the end. No need to shout about it.
When the Pixies get romantic, itʼs all very hush-hush, too — like in the Kim Deal-sung and co-written ʽGiganticʼ, in which the protagonist apparently gets emotional about spying on a big black guy making love to a girl in «a shady place», wherever that might be. The melody is post-punk, the vocal chorus is starry-eyed retro pop, the lyrics would make Mick Jagger blush, but the overall impression is that the Pixies are observing what goes on in this crazy world out of some deep burrow, where Kimʼs bass is a little bulldozer slicing through soil, and the vocals are those of excited (and ever so slightly perverted) chipmunks, amazed at the conduct of their technically more advanced organic brethren above ground. The moral of the story, of course, is that if you ever had the urge to feel like a chipmunk in its burrow, then the Pixies are the right band for you.
Of course, if it were all just about the vibe and little else, the album would not have produced the same impression on musicians as it did at the time. In fact, the band displays an almost alarming level of professionalism for a DIY-underground act — Francis and Kim may not be virtuosos on their instruments, but they can play tightly and cohesively, turning fast, punkier numbers like ʽTonyʼs Themeʼ and ʽOh My Golly!ʼ into ferociously efficient blitzkrieg attacks; and Santiagoʼs talent at making creative chaos is even more fully displayed on the extended version of ʽVamosʼ, whose middle section somehow manages to channel the spirits of Jimmy Page, Hendrix, and Marc Bolan at the same time — although the songʼs insane bumble-bee riff remains the key element which makes it a Pixies song and nobody elseʼs.
From an alternate perspective, Surfer Rosa may certainly come off as too juvenile, too screechy, too insubstantial, too self-consciously artsy, or all these things at the same time. People who expect all great music to be no less than cathartic will never agree about the greatness of this record — though, if you ask me, it only requires a little patience and a little upgrade of some screws in your brain to perceive elements of catharsis in songs like ʽGiganticʼ and ʽCactusʼ. And people who do agree about the greatness of this record will always have a hell of a time trying to convey it to those who do not — or even, for instance, explain what it is that separates a first-rate post-modernist band like Ween, whose main function was to close the book on 20th century popular music, from an exceptional post-modernist band like the Pixies, whose main function was to point the way to the future (which, for that matter, many people were able to see but not many were able to follow).
If you ask me, though, one of the markings of a truly great artist is to be able to awaken the inner child in a serious adult — something at which such bands as The Beatles and Talking Heads truly excelled, and Surfer Rosa follows faithfully in their footsteps. No wonder they cap things off with a song whose title befits a counting out rhyme (ʽBrick Is Redʼ), and whose lyrics alternate between similar counting-out nonsense ("a fish is fast and Jimmyʼs cast, hang me") and a proclamation that the band is here to stay ("itʼs not time for me to go"), while its absurdly distorted riff sounds like a twisted fanfare from some teen-oriented Sixties TV show. This, I guess, is what properly separates Pixies from Nirvana — Kurt Cobain could be influenced by this stuff, but he could never write stuff like this because heʼd murdered his inner child long before he became known to the public. Ironically, though, Surfer Rosa could never dream of reaching the sort of mass appeal reserved for Nevermind — precisely because the art of awakening oneʼs inner child has become too complicated and esoteric in the modern age for people to understand its proper importance.
"David Loweringʼs drums crash down on the senses with the mammoth energy of a John Bonham"
ReplyDeleteWhile this is correct this is by far not enough to justify a recommendation in my view. One of the biggest problem of rock in the 1980's - it actually started shortly after 1975, with AC/DC - is the simplification of the rhythms used. One reason Judas Priest replaced Les Binks by Dave Holland was because the latter waa willing to play drums in a simpler way. The same for Cozy Powell's successors in Rainbow.
David Lowering fits in this pattern (so did Ian Paice btw in the 1980's), but John Bonham died in time to avoid this trap.
It would change only in the 1990's, due to grunge. One example woefully neglected is Therapy's Fyfe Ewing; when I compare Bone Machine with Therapy?'s Meat Abstract (recorded only two years later) the difference is striking.
90s rock is the music of my generation, but now with 60+ years of R'n'R history behind us, I think I can say, rock peaked in the 70s. Ideas, playing, production, the whole package.
DeleteI would say that the peak of the entire 1962-1999 era would be 1967-1973 or 1966-1974, depending on how much you like that era's music
DeleteGreat songs but I never liked the production. Steve Albini butchered this one, IMO. Dialog snippets also irritate.
ReplyDeleteI do not *dislike* the Albini production but the spacey production of Gil Norton suited them better--it's good Albini only worked with them once.
ReplyDeleteBrick Is Red sounds like something off Disraeli Gears.
I'll add my voice to those who like the songs but not Albini's production. For instance I far prefer this single version of Gigantic produced with Gil Norton (who also produced Doolittle):
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-x58AeYTDU