1) Cecilia Ann; 2) Rock Music; 3) Velouria; 4) Allison; 5) Is She Weird; 6) Ana; 7) All Over The World; 8) Dig For Fire; 9) Down To The Well; 10) The Happening; 11) Blown Away; 12) Hang Wire; 13) Stormy Weather; 14) Havalina.
General verdict: The Pixies get more soulful, serious, and nostalgic, sacrificing some of their punchy adolescence as their generation ship crosses into the next galaxy.
Pixiesʼ third album sometimes gets a bad rap
because it clearly fails to reinvent the world of music the same way that Doolittle did — and it is hardly a
coincidence that, for the first time in their relatively short life, the band
had hardly any well-gestated material left in stock, and often had to improvise
right in the studio. Indeed, next to the total unpredictability and diversity
of the previous two albums, Bossanova
might come across as a somewhat monotonous, sludgy, rock-oriented experience.
But I personally feel that if Doolittle
was their Sgt. Pepper, then Bossanova, in some ways, stands up to
being regarded as their White Album
— a record on which the greatest band of its generation has absolutely nothing
left to prove and simply resorts to having as much creative fun as possible.
Sometimes it works, occasionally it doesnʼt, but the inspiration never stops,
and the juice just keeps on flowinʼ.
It is not the happiest-sounding Pixies album,
though, that is for sure. Much of the bandʼs humour has only been preserved in
the form of ironic viciousness, and there are overtones of melancholia,
nostalgia, and acute yearning for some better place to be (from ʽVelouriaʼ to
ʽHavalinaʼ). Throw in the total lack of kick-ass fast tempo rockers, the
prevalence of sludgy proto-grunge mid-tempo guitar melodies, and the fact that
Kim Deal has largely been pushed into the background (admittedly, she did save
all her songwriting ideas for the Breeders at the time), and it is easy to
understand why some people might need quite a bit of time to get into this
record. But do trust me, it is very worth getting into in the end.
Amusingly, there seems to be not one, but two introductions to the album — a
ʽForewordʼ and a ʽPrefaceʼ, if you will. The first one is ʽCecilia Annʼ, a
cover of an old instrumental by The Surftones which gave the entire record its
reputation as the Pixiesʼ «surf-rock album», despite the fact that there had
always been a huge surf influence on Pixiesʼ music and Bossanova hardly seems to capitalize on it any more than any other
Pixies album. What they do to the tune, by fattening up its guitar tones and
putting the rhythm section into an almost heavy-metallic overdrive, is prove
what Quentin Tarantino said about surf music — that to him, surf music had
always been more about Clint Eastwood in an Ennio Morricone-orchestrated movie
than about actual surfing. Itʼs catchy, itʼs fun, itʼs danceable, but it also
has DRAMA, and the Pixies cram as much epos and pathos into these galloping two
minutes as possible. Once the two minutes are up, you have been mentally
prepared to, maybe, take this upcoming stuff a little bit more seriously than
ever before... and the lack of vocals, which always raise the bar on quirkiness
and playfulness in the Pixiesʼ case, is also quite important.
The vocals do appear on the second introductory
track, seductively titled ʽRock Musicʼ — but you will never understand a word
they say, because the entire track is like a drunk antithesis to the tight
cohesiveness of ʽCecilia Annʼ: with its endless distorted droning riff,
continuously wailing monotonous lead guitar, and hardcore screaming all over
the studio, it veers on the edge of self-parody, or, if not, at least on the
edge of total irony in the face of «rock music» as an artistic concept. As a
song, itʼs not much — more like a relentless wall of noise whose «anger» is a
bona fide theatrical performance destined to undermine and expose the
credibility of «anger» in music itself (a technique that would later be adopted
by Ween in their arsenal). But at the same time it is also a sign that the
Pixies are not afraid to «mature» by adhering to deeper layers of production
and even fatter guitar tones, and by making their music less prone to being
denounced as juvenile novelty garbage (if you ever had that temptation, that
is).
That sign kind of comes in handy as you proceed
on down the line. The first real Pixies song (and the first real classic) on
here is ʽVelouriaʼ, announced by grungy power chords worthy of the Seattle
scene rather than the Boston one — yet just a few seconds later it becomes
clear that this is still a typical romantic Pixies anthem, with a lead guitar
line that is more Beethoven than Kurt Cobain and vocals that have more
blue-eyed soul in them than hardcore growling. Melodically, it seems to be distantly
related to ʽWave Of Mutilationʼ, but the vocals and that wailing lead line give
it a more intimate, serenade-like feel, something youʼd probably expect
delivered from one star-crossʼd lover to another, especially if the romance
took place on a planet where they actually name girls ʽVelouriaʼ. The lyrics
donʼt mean much — just grab on to bits and pieces like "hold my head,
weʼll trampoline" and "we will wade in the shine of the ever"
and thatʼs all you need to request the song for your wedding ceremony, really.
The weird thing is, it actually sounds like a genuine, serious, heartwarming
love song — even if, on a formal level, the band does not step outside their
post-modern conventions at all. I can smirk at this song and I can feel
cathartic at the same time — few bands can manage that feat.
Each and every song that follows ʽVelouriaʼ has
something to offer, some cute or crazy idea that might seem genius or stupid
but actually makes you notice it and evaluate it. These cute or crazy ideas
somehow seem largely equivalent to me, so I do not really have any favorites —
in terms of pure moronic catchiness, though, the golden bough goes to ʽIs She
Weirdʼ, a song whose "is she weird, is she white, is she promised to the
night?" has graced my shower one too many times, and whose words, mood,
and playful mystique make it a great candidate for some Witcher-themed video, or at least a self-made voodoo ritual. Then
again, they are pixies, and itʼs high
time they did a creepy counting-out rhyme for the midnight hour. Again, no true
innovations here — Santiagoʼs twangy guitar lines weave around Kimʼs pounding
hammer bass more or less the same way they did from the very start — but no
previous Pixies song truly sounded this ghostly.
The rest of the songs I will go over quickly,
especially since thereʼs so many of them. ʽAllisonʼ is a minute-long nursery
rhyme whose point is to rhyme ʽAllisonʼ with "hit the sun", and I
approve. ʽAnaʼ is a softer, surfier sequel to ʽVelouriaʼ, with gorgeous lead
guitar lines that are almost too well-defined and memorable for the songʼs
dream-pop textures (if somebody tells you that all dream-pop just has to be
atmospheric and squishy and slipping through your brain, shut them up with this
song). ʽAll Over The Worldʼ sounds like something Iʼd like to take with me on a
generation starship ("with a pet at my side, God in the sky...") —
and clocking in at 5:30, it feels almost like the Pixiesʼ own little
progressive rock epic; at the very least, the looping "all my thoughts /
all I am / are my thoughts" bit is their personal mantra and the closest,
so far, they got to turning their music into a (post-modern) religious
ceremony.
Of their second single, ʽDig For Fireʼ, I can
only say that it is a curious way to merge a very Talking Heads-sounding verse
(funky guitar weaving, ʽOnce In A Lifetimeʼ-style sloganeering vocals and all
that) with a Madchester-influenced chorus — Talking Heads meet Stone Roses —
and although Frank Black himself later dismissed the song as a «bad Talking
Heads imitation», I think the combination of the cryptic verse with the
heavenly chorus still works. ʽDown To The Wellʼ is probably the albumʼs laziest
song, but even here I like the mock-silliness of the melodic resolution, in
which "...she went down to the WELL!" is delivered with such a
gleefully demonic attitude that you quickly understand WELL is really just a
euphemism for HELL. After this, ʽThe Happeningʼ delivers yet another nice
melodic contrast — a strange swampy sound for the verse and a high-pitched,
totally stoned psychodrone for the bridge, with the lyrics eventually turning
to something that feels like rejected outtakes from an early draft of ʽBob
Dylanʼs 115th Dreamʼ ("I was driving doing nothing on the shores of Great
Salt Lake...").
Skipping over two more tracks, we have a
symmetric ending for the album with not one, but two outros. The «proper»
ending is ʽStormy Weatherʼ, a track that could pretty much serve as the
blueprint for all classic Brian Jonestown Massacre material — a slow, lazy,
repetitive retro-Sixties psycho-party vibe with a hip (post-)modern
sensibility; silly and way too
rowdy-sailorish for Pixies, but if these guys just wonʼt be pigeonholed, so be
it. And then, for the ʽGood Nightʼ encore you get ʽHavalinaʼ — smooth, tender,
full of classy romantic guitar lines, escapist as heck and a great reminder of
how sentimental this band really is at heart.
At the end of the day, there is no dazzling,
teasing flame at the heart of Bossanova;
it does not even try to recreate the infectiousness of Doolittle, and it does show the band falling back just a little bit
too strong on past musical formulae — again, much like the Beatles did with the
White Album, or like the Heads did
on Speaking In Tongues and their
later albums. But the bandʼs overall vision, their sense of humour and their
ability to make even clichéd musical ideas sound interesting once again are
fully intact. And this additional touch of maturity might actually allow some
people to develop a tighter emotional band with the album than any before it —
ʽVelouriaʼ and ʽAnaʼ, in particular, have an aura of sincere gorgeousness that
would still be unthinkable on the much more playful and sarcastic plains of Surfer Rosa and Doolittle. The best news is, in keeping up with Great Band
Reputation, no two Pixies albums (at least, from their classic era) sound alike
— well, best for those of us who value experimentation and diversity over
sticking to the exact same formula, at least.
Fun fact: Cecilia Ann was actually written (in 1989!) by the mastering engineer Steve Hoffman, here is the story in his own words https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/cecilia-ann-by-the-pixies-yes-i-wrote-recorded-the-song-as-the-surftones-with-my-buddy-frosty.272578/
ReplyDeleteHa! Well, they fooled me for sure. The funniest thing is, though, it's just a bit of trivia that doesn't really change anything, because the original has such an authentic retro sound.
DeleteBrilliant comparison about the Beatles and Pixies there! This record actually makes a lot more sense within that context. But also I think the problem also came that the Pixies style of music is harder to make if the band is having a lot of infighting (seeing that Deal and Francis were basically hating each other after Doolittle)
ReplyDeleteWhich calls for even more Beatles comparisons actually!
DeleteSomewhat tangential but I'll post it here anyway. It may surprise some to know about the strange connection between the Pixies and alternative/indie Christian rock music.
ReplyDeleteFrank Black listened to Christian music pioneer Larry Norman a lot growing up. Larry Norman's blues stomper Watch What You're Doing ends with him repeating the line "come on pilgrim you know he loves you" which Frank Black quotes in levitate me and named the first Pixies ep after. You can hear some similar vocal tics between Black and Norman and the reference wasn't just an ironic aside, Black has expressed sincere admiration for Larry Norman. (I kind of wish he had picked a better Norman song though, watch what you're doing is far from my favorite by him).
It's not surprising then that non-mainstream Christian musicians would repay the favor. Daniel Smith of the Danielson Famile modeled his squeaky falsetto vocals on Frank Black and utilized some similar dynamic shifts. Sufjan Stevens first gained notice by collaborating with Danielson and imitating his mix of folk and chamber pop, but Danielson's music is much more visceral and frankly weird, though some might be put off by the explicit religious message.
Other 90's Christian bands that were influenced by the Pixies include Havalina Rail Co. who named themselves after the song Havalina on this album. One would be hard pressed to find direct sonic influence though despite the band's attempts to cover as many Americana genres as they could. Similarly the electronic group House of Wires included a synthpop cover of Where is my Mind on their album You Are Obsolete, and Norwegian band Royal (featuring Emil Nikolaisen who went on to found Serenah Manesh) had definite Pixie dynamics mixed with lounge chords. The above appeared on the Christian label Tooth and Nail records (who had so much money in the 90s they took a chance on all sorts of non-commercial groups) but had fairly subtle religious overtones for the most part.
Anyway, a weird side effect many Pixie fans aren't aware of. I'm a Christian myself but I'd enjoy all of the above named bands even if I wasn't. And I still maintain that Danielson is far superior to Sufjan, though lacking his technical skill and being a much more love it or hate it group.
Well Frank's lyrics were always full of christian imagery. Also space, aliens, sex and lots of weird stuff. Also great melodies and imaginative vocal approaches. Great guy with rich and wonderful (and sadly underrated and somewhat forgotten) solo career.
DeleteAnother wonderful Pixes album. Yes, every one of their classic albums sounds different and yet uniquely Pixies-like. Also diversity between the songs, from the aggression of Rock Music to the beauty of Havalina. That's why they need lush production and why I never liked Albini's monochromatic approach on Surfer Rosa.
ReplyDeleteGeorge! Thanks to your review I got into Pixies. I must say I enjoy Come on Pilgrim immensely. Now on to their other albums.
ReplyDelete