Pixies: Trompe Le Monde

PIXIES: TROMPE LE MONDE (1991)

1) Trompe Le Monde; 2) Planet Of Sound; 3) Alec Eiffel; 4) The Sad Punk; 5) Head On; 6) U-Mass; 7) Palace Of The Brine; 8) Letter To Memphis; 9) Bird Dream Of The Olympus Mons; 10) Space (I Believe In); 11) Subbacultcha; 12) Distance Equals Rate Times Time; 13) Lovely Day; 14) Motorway To Roswell; 15) The Navajo Know.

General verdict: The Pixies get themselves a solid rocking sound for their swan song, but oddly sacrifice the hooks in favor of somewhat old-fashioned power-pop energy.

I wish I could continue the analogy that was dropped in the previous review and treat Trompe Le Monde as Pixiesʼ Abbey Road, but, in all honesty, this record is just a tad short of such a status. Perhaps a better analogy would be Pixiesʼ Let It Be, since Trompe Le Monde, too, seems to be driven by one manʼs desire to move a little closer to «the roots» and produce something a little more spontaneous, more wild, more rocking than usual. This is unquestionably the bandʼs loudest, most abrazive album, one on which they end up sounding influenced by Cheap Trick far more often than they do by Talking Heads; and while this is definitely not a problem in the large scheme of things — after all, the Pixies are a fuckinʼ rock band, are they not? — it does result in a certain lack of subtlety, and in the band occasionally slipping into the world of fairly generic rock clichés (at least, musical; «message-wise», Trompe Le Monde is still as idiosyncratically Pixies-ish as it gets).

Arguably the main reason why Trompe Le Monde, good as it is, is still the weakest Pixies album is that it is not too much of a Pixies album — it is more of a Frank Black solo album with guest musicians Kim Deal and Joey Santiago. Kim has no compositions of her own here (not sure if she was blocked by Francis or if she simply was saving them all for future Breeders records), no lead vocals, relatively few backing vocals, and even her bass lines are often relegated to purely supportive roles. And Joey, while still an essential contributor to the psychedelic textures of the music, has nowhere near as many memorable lead parts as he used to. For the most part, this is a Frank Black show all the way — his chugging rhythms, his weird vocal hooks, his twisted sense of humor, and his pissed-off attitude, of which we seem to be receiving a mighty huge dose here. You never really saw the Pixies in such a jerky mood throughout, believe me.

To try to understand what they were really going for on this album, it might make sense to begin with a comparison of their unexpected cover of The Jesus And Mary Chainʼs ʽHead Onʼ with the original. The most surprising thing is that although the cover postdates the original by two years, it actually sounds retro-fied: the JAMC version, with its heavy echo on the vocals and the drums, is immediately datable to the Eighties, while the Pixies here make it sound exactly like a Cheap Trick song circa 1977-78, with those thick, glammy guitar tones, exuberant barman-give-me-one-more-drink lead vocals, and a we-want-it-louder-than-everyone-else attitude. Could it be that a band whose purpose once seemed to be to push classic pop-rock in a futuristic direction is now showing signs of repentance, looking back at the old school glam-rock and punk-rock of the mid-Seventies as a key reference point? And could this «nostalgic reinvention» of a contemporary alt-rock hit be their flagman statement about it?

The thought hits harder when you combine it with all that anger captured on the record — anger clearly directed at none other than a large chunk of the Pixiesʼ own core audiences. Two songs stand out particularly in that respect, both of them well-known highlights of the album. One is, of course, ʽSubbacultchaʼ, an unusually straightforward (for Black) indictment of «club culture» as an excuse to find oneself a hot piece of ass — and set, might I add, to a very clearly retro melody, very reminiscent of the Modern Loversʼ ʽPablo Picassoʼ, except that first-rate production allows each rhythm and lead note to cut even sharper than Jonathan Richmanʼs band. The other one is ʽU-Massʼ, an even more vicious assault on the phoney varieties of progressive student subculture which Iʼm sure all their student audience must have loved with the exact same abandon that the Ramonesʼ core audience displayed while gleefully bopping along to ʽCretin Hopʼ and ʽTeenage Lobotomyʼ. The songʼs melody has been often compared to ʽSmells Like Teen Spiritʼ (itʼs funny that Nevermind and Trompe Le Monde were released with one dayʼs difference), but Pixies donʼt do achingly desperate grunge — they do deeply sarcastic grunge, and they play it here in such a way that the guitar chords are just as reminiscent of AC/DC and ZZ Top as they are of their own contemporary alt-rock scene.

None of this is to say that the Pixies have somehow turned into some sort of conservative musical reactionaries overnight. The music on the whole, be it the production, or the inventive weaving techniques between Black and Santiago, cannot be dismissed as a return to stale clichés; and the elements of vitriolic criticism against the bandʼs own breeding grounds still count as occasional blips among the usual sea of random impressionist imagery that covers territory all the way from the Eiffel Tower (ʽAlec Eiffelʼ) to Native American legends (ʽThe Navajo Knowsʼ). Whatever be the case, it is not very likely that a band with such a history as the Pixies could turn around and start churning out «generic rockʼnʼroll». The biggest problem is that by concentrating too much on rocking out and venting off, the Pixies slightly lost their grip on their legendary ability to create instantly captivating pop hooks. Even after a whole bunch of listens to the album, my mind still tends to remember much of it as a rather messy and monotonous sonic glop, instead of building a separate cozy cottage for each individual song.

Personally, I very much miss the stylistic diversity of Bossanova — there are, for instance, absolutely no moments of tender, subtle beauty of the ʽAnaʼ or ʽHavalinaʼ type here; not a single song, in fact, that could be labeled as a «ballad». The closest they get to being a little romantic here is on ʽMotorway To Roswellʼ, a winding epic about an alien beingʼs tragic death in an accident that does not really deserve its five-minute length — but even that one is ultimately so loud and crunchy that even its nicely placed piano flourish in the coda does not do much by way of reminding us of how tender Frank Black and the boys can be when a certain muse grabs them by the spleen. Not here. Not this time.

If you have not yet heard the album and these several paragraphs happen to be discouraging you from checking it out, though, do not be discouraged — just take a quick listen to the title track, since I think that those minute and forty seconds are perfectly representative of the album as a whole. Some thick, speedy, mammoth riffage; some flashy psychedelic guitar leads; some quirky changes in tempo; some cosmic lyrics delivered with the appropriate cosmic vocals. Itʼs a cool sound, and one that hasnʼt dated one bit in thirty years — you still have indie kids doing this kind of music to this very day. But it hasnʼt really got much to latch on to, does it? No "my boneʼs got a little machine" or "debaser, debaser!" or even a "Caribo-o-o-u!" to it. Sadly, the same type of impression applies to a good half of the album.

That said, let me quickly list a few songs which are right up there with the very best that Pixies ever put out. ʽAlec Eiffelʼ is a modest masterpiece of speedy pop-rock, sounding like a future blueprint for every fast Arcade Fire song ever made. ʽLovely Dayʼ takes the bass line of ʽYou Canʼt Hurry Loveʼ, gives it a little twist and briefly turns the Pixies into a «dark side of Motown» band. But where they really pull all the stops is on ʽSpace (I Believe In)ʼ, a one-of-a-kind mix of grunge, Goth, and psychedelic elements with the most brutally honest lyrics in the universe: "We needed something to move and fill up the space / We needed something — this always is just the case". As you can see, itʼs not about cosmic space, itʼs all about filler space, and somehow in this weird and wild universe the song that was most likely written on the spot to fill space ended up being the best number on the entire album. How can you ever forget "JEFREY WITH ONE 'F', JEFREY! JEFREY WITH ONE 'F', JEFREY!"? (Allegedly, the tablas guy who they got to play with them on the song was actually called Jef Feldman, with one 'f').

Okay, that wasnʼt too many songs, but the truth is, while I actually enjoy most of the album, somehow numbers such as ʽLetter To Memphisʼ just do not stimulate me to come up with any brilliant ideas, if you know what I mean. Quite a few people are ready to swear by Trompe Le Monde as the crowning moment of glory for the band, which stumps me — is this because of all the loudness and distortion? Because the actual songwriting is rather lazy, to be honest. One commenter on Mark Prindleʼs old review site actually confessed to loving the album because it was «MEAN and UGLY» where the previous ones were «CUTE and CLEVER» — I think this is a fairly appropriate description as far as minimalistic descriptions go, but maybe the problem is that a lot of other bands can be MEAN and UGLY like the Pixies, but very, very few can be CUTE and CLEVER like the Pixies. Just about anybody could come up with songs like ʽPlanet Of Soundʼ or ʽThe Sad Punkʼ (check out the career of Art Brut, for instance), but who the heck could come up with another ʽWave Of Mutilationʼ? Nobody has, so far.

As the final brick in the bandʼs classic house, though, Trompe Le Monde makes perfect sense: it has a sound all its own, and its raging energy guaranteed that the band would go out on a pretty powerful, if not particularly inventive, note. It was never specially planned as a swan song, and it does not sound like a swan song, but itʼs better to go out with a bang than a whimper in any case. Itʼs like ʽMotorway To Roswellʼ is an allegory for their entire journey — Trompe Le Monde is really the sound of the Pixiesʼ little flying saucer entering the atmosphere at full speed and burning up before it ever has the chance to land. I only wish I could enjoy the individual songs as much as I respect the overall idea of the album, but perhaps it is an unfortunate effect of not having had the chance to enjoy it back in 1991 — my ear being subsequently spoilt with way too much bombastic indie rock that was probably influenced by it. Then again, as I said, way too much of this album actually sounds like stuff that came before it, so itʼs all really part of that one big food chain, and maybe it is just that this particular link does not feel particularly outstanding in the larger context of swallowing and digesting. 

Pixies: Bossanova

PIXIES: BOSSANOVA (1990)

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. 

Pixies: Doolittle

PIXIES: DOOLITTLE (1989)

1) Debaser; 2) Tame; 3) Wave Of Mutilation; 4) I Bleed; 5) Here Comes Your Man; 6) Dead; 7) Monkey Gone To Heaven; 8) Mr. Grieves; 9) Crackity Jones; 10) La La Love You; 11) No. 13 Baby; 12) There Goes My Gun; 13) Hey; 14) Silver; 15) Gouge Away.

General verdict: A Beach Boyʼs brain on Salvador Dali... or should that be the other way around?

[This is a slightly modified version of an earlier review written for the short-lived Great Album series.]

The major difference between Doolittle, the bandʼs second and (according to general critical consensus) most perfectly realised album, and Surfer Rosa, is that it was recorded on a bigger budget, distributed by a bigger label (Elektra), and recorded and produced after the Pixies got their first round of warm critical (if not commercial) reception. This is important, because the scope and general aim of the songs here is clearly more ambitious, and even if we wonʼt go as far as to say that it represented Black Francisʼ plan of world conquest, we still must admit that it goes beyond merely "having fun": for Surfer Rosa, it is not clear that Francis had any plan at all, but for Doolittle, he most certainly had one. Very roughly speaking, we have a lo-fi to hi-fi transition here, so if you are a lo-fi adept, you shall probably want to brand this one a «sellout», which is okay by me — if only everybody were capable of selling out this way...

Despite the obvious upgrade in opportunities, the Pixies largely stick to the tried and true four-piece lineup — only augmented, for experimental purposes, by a string quartet on ʻMonkey Gone To Heavenʼ. The recording itself took place in studios in Boston and Stamford over almost a month in October-November 1988, with Gil Norton (previously associated largely with Throwing Muses) producing, at a rate of approximately one song per day — rather curious, in fact, considering how short most of the tunes are; but it sort of makes sense in the end, when you begin to truly understand the bandʼs perfectionism and close attention to minute details, no matter how brief the song. With serious press coverage, MTV videos, decent airplay, and general word getting out, Doolittle literally put the band on the charts — although it is instructive to know that they would always be more popular in Europe than in their native country, with Doolittle stalling at #98 on the US charts while rocketing all the way to #8 on the UK ones (and all of the bandʼs subsequent releases, including the 2014 reunion record, would follow the same pattern): apparently, their brand of intellectual pop was a bit too much for mass American audiences to take in (stupid Yanks and all that). As of now, it remains their best-selling record, and the most common answer to the question "where should I start with the Pixies?", not to mention the one LP to feature the most memorable sleeve — itʼs not that often, after all, that you get to see a monkey with a halo trapped inside an octagram.

Only very recently did the album finally see an expanded edition: Doolittle 25 came out in 2015 (should really be Doolittle 26, but round numbers win over production delays) with two additional CDs worth of material — one with a bunch of B-sides and live radio sessions, and one with a whole set of raw demos. Since I have not yet laid my hands on that one, I am not sure if it is going to be of much interest to anybody except collectors, but in any case, it is nice to know that the albumʼs classic status has finally been confirmed with a proper deluxe edition.

So, where should we start? Okay, first and simplest, Doolittle is just a classy little pop album. Itʼs got enough detours from the generic pop formula to be eligible for "important artistic statement" status, yet at the heart of almost each of these songs you will find ear-worms — modestly repetitive, well-constructed, emotionally resonant instrumental and vocal hooks that clearly show how «music therapy» was priority number one for the band, well before any intellectual appraisal of the albumʼs lyrical or symbolic content. You do not need to go further than the beginning of ʻDebaserʼ: many bands would not bother to push beyond the opening bars of Kimʼs bass and Francisʼ droning rhythm guitar, but what really matters here is the uplifting-romantic pop riff that Santiago throws in at 0:08 into the song, clearly setting the stage for something brash and heroic. And I do not even need to mention ʻHere Comes Your Manʼ, with its guitar riff that should proudly carry the Buddy Holly Seal of Appreciation on it (in fact, itʼs hard for me to believe that Francis and Santiago did not steal that chord sequence from some Buddy Holly song, but fortunately for them, I can never think of an actual source).

For a small bunch of guitar-wielding indie kids with no Mellotrons or even Jew harps, itʼs quite pleasantly diverse, too: fast, mid- and slow tempos, melodies ranging from punk to pop to surf-rock to dark folk (ʻSilverʼ), with enough variety spread across those 15 tracks to prevent easy pigeonholing. Yet behind all this variety also lies a certain unifying concept, which is hard to formulate in words, but if roughly approximated, it would sound something like "Incidental Music For A Culture Overdose". Black Francisʼ songs are like tiny capsules in which he concentrates and diffuses gazillions of mini-impressions — musical, literary, cinematic, highbrow and trashy alike — and which he passes off as the average reactions of a culture-crazed, or simply an information-crazed Joe driven to inadequate, and sometimes downright crazy, behaviour by the world pressing down and around on him. Itʼs very much the same principle that is essential to grasp in order to understand Talking Heads, but there is also a big difference: Doolittle does not have that much reflection and introspection, it is not about the protagonist wallowing in his own paranoia... it simply is.

The anthemic ʻDebaserʼ lays it on the line fairly quickly — with not-too-obscure references to Un Chien Andalou, itʼs like a laymanʼs gut reaction to being exposed to the world of artistic strangeness and unpredictability, something a slightly offset teen could experience and pronounce upon a fortuitous visit to an arthouse. Like most Pixies song, it is very tongue-in-cheek, too — you never truly know if the band is celebrating this attitude or mocking it, and you will never truly know it even when you reach the end of the album. One thing is for certain: Doolittle is all about growing up to be a debaser, and most of the time itʼs on, weʼre busy debasing everyone and everything in sight. Second song, case in point: donʼt you think that the correct words for the scream-your-heart-out overloud chorus section of the song is not "Cookie, I think youʼre TAME! TAME! TAAAAAAME!", but rather "Cookie, I think youʼre wild?" A very simple, direct, and unforgettable inversion of values. 

But as far as I am concerned, the real highlights of Doolittle are the anthemic songs rather than the cooky-gimmicky interludes. ʻWave Of Mutilationʼ opens with arguably the albumʼs greatest guitar melody, a wobbly wave-like trill that resolves into an arena-rock set of power chords, and this is followed by Francisʼ most inspired bit of vocal arrangement — heʼs not a great singer at all, but he is a genius artist, and thereʼs nothing quite like that contrast between the enigmatic breathy whisper of the first two lines ("cease to resist, giving my goodbye / drive my car into the ocean") and the loud, distant, echoey third line ("you think Iʼm dead, but I sail away"). Itʼs like during the first two lines they are brushing in a speedboat across the waterʼs surface, and then the third line shifts their trajectory 60-70 degrees and propulses them to high heavens, before making the backwards plunge for the chorus ("on a wave of mutilation"). Let alone the fact that the second verse unquestionably features the most seductive manner of pronouncing the noun "crustaceans", the song is like the perfect ode to narcissism and masochism rolled in one — I only hope that nobody gave in to its lyrics and atmosphere too easily, because it really taunts you to hop in your car and drive it off the highest cliff to make the grandest exit known to mankind. At least itʼs a good thing there ainʼt no cliff overlooking Mariana.

ʻMonkey Gone To Heavenʼ is often mentioned as an «environmental» song, due to its mention of the "ten million pounds of sludge" and "hole in the sky", but it would be too boring for Pixies to simply write an ecological lament — itʼs really more than that, sort of an apocalyptic prediction where "this monkey" refers to all of us, and the two violins and two cellos are added to the mix to help complete the aura of quiet, but slightly amused sadness already generated by the repetitive chorus (almost makes it sound like the Electric Light Orchestra, in a way). Again, it is a pretty unique lyrical and musical take on the end of the world, neither too angry nor too morbid — although most people will probably remember it for the silly numerological bit in the middle, which Francis just threw in for some extra kicks but which does not really mean much of anything on its own (why does he have to scream "GOD IS SEVEN! GOD IS SEVEN!" at the top of his lungs as if he were having a sudden epiphany, or getting exorcised? No idea, but I guess we all love it anyway).

Thereʼs also «light anthemic», in the form of ʻHere Comes Your Manʼ, which was among the first songs Francis ever wrote — this explains the Buddy Holly-esque hook and the relative «fluffiness» of the tune (which was still released as a single, but apparently the band never liked playing it live in the good old days), yet it fits in very well with all the rest, even despite its innate optimism. Fact is, you donʼt really know what youʼre waiting for, you have no idea of who is your man and where he is supposed to take you to; you might just as well be a monkey waiting for him to take you to heaven. And a bigger fact is, thereʼs no «optimism» or «pessimism» on this record — itʼs morally ambiguous as heck. It lives in two basic states: «overdrive» and «preparing for overdrive», but you got to be prepared to accept that the Doolittle universe knows not the simple contrast between «happy» and «sad». It does know the contrast between «loud» and «quiet», and the louder it is, the more chances you get at getting a great riff, and so ʻHere Comes Your Manʼ  belongs in the same category as ʻDebaserʼ, despite being superficially more «accessible» to the general population.

And where is this overdrive stemming from? Like I said — culture overdose. Hyperbolic reaction to Bunuel on ʻDebaserʼ. Vampiric fantasies on ʻI Bleedʼ. Excitable young man reading the story of Bathsheba and Uriah on ʻDeadʼ, and then the story of Samson and Delilah on ʻGouge Awayʼ. Throw in some memories of a crazy Puerto Rican roommate (ʻCrackity Jonesʼ) and of various types of easy women (ʻTameʼ, ʻNo. 13 Babyʼ), some numerology, some Greek mythology (at least there are no songs about superheroes named Tony on this record), and what you have here is a slightly less educated, but much more easily excitable version of Stephen Dedalus swimming in a chaotic soup of his charged-up memories and encyclopaedic knowledge. Doolittle makes no major statements, issues no accusations, and would commit seppuku if it ever found itself overwhelming us with a much-too-serious attitude — but somehow its twisted, catchy, humorous, surrealist regurgitations of human experience are capable of producing a much stronger effect than oh so many Serious Works of Art.

I do have to say that I have always found the track sequencing a little uneven: most of the big anthems and strongest hooks are lodged on its first side, with the first stretch of seven songs pretty much unbeatable in its onslaught. However, starting with ʻMr. Grievesʼ, whose mock-reggae verses sound like the recordʼs first serious slip-up to me, the record becomes shakier: stuff like ʻNo. 13 Babyʼ, while not bad at all on its own, shares the same tempo and stylistics with ʻMonkeyʼ without being in possession of a comparably strong hook, and I can never remember much of interest about ʻThere Goes My Gunʼ or ʻHeyʼ, either. As sacrilegious as it sounds, I sometimes think they could have taken Gil Nortonʼs advice and make some of the good songs a tad longer, sacrificing some of the weaker ones at their expense — for instance, you can say what you want, but two minutes is way too little for ʻWave Of Mutilationʼ. In other words, Doolittle is not all perfection, although I reiterate that even the weakest songs here still have a sense of purpose — itʼs just that most of the highlights are concentrated in the first half.

You could also say, I guess, that the twin guitar-bass-drums setup for this music does not fully justify its ambitions; and considering how well the strings work on ʻMonkey Gone To Heavenʼ, it is lamentable that more instruments, or at least a larger amount of guitar tones have not been used on the album (being well aware all the time that its budget, though significantly larger than for Surfer Rosa, still wouldnʼt allow for too much whipped cream). Normally, it works, and they are capable of tapping the instrumentsʼ potential (ʻWave Of Mutilationʼ is a prime example of how one guitar part fully compensates for the lack of a symphonic arrangement); but every once in a while, the guitars are just playing «standard» alternative rock parts (ʻGouge Awayʼ), and thatʼs not ideal if you want to leave behind a proper masterpiece. This, too, is a little responsible for the excitement occasionally (very occasionally) dying down. I mean, would it have hurt them too much to at least drag a piano in the studio? Oh well, forget it. Itʼs not like the prosecution has much of a case here anyway.

In some small way, Doolittle does sound like every great pop album produced in the 1990s. It paves the road to all sorts of post-modernistic attitudes in music, combining gut-level, poppy enjoyability with gratuituous (or not so gratuitous?) cultural references, an ability to sound tremendously emotionally engaged and morally abstinent at the same time, and a crazy excited whirlwind that can suck in just about anything that happens to make its way past your window. It might be the closest analogy to a Pulp Fiction for modern music — a gate-opening progenitor that presents unlimited possibilities in an easily accessible and humorous manner, and launches a thousand ships while never being bested by anyone. And itʼs still totally cool after all these years, in all its glorious simplicity and innocence.

Pixies: Surfer Rosa

PIXIES: SURFER ROSA (1988)

1) Bone Machine; 2) Break My Body; 3) Something Against You; 4) Broken Face; 5) Gigantic; 6) River Euphrates; 7) Where Is My Mind?; 8) Cactus; 9) Tonyʼs Theme; 10) Oh My Golly!; 11) You Fucking Die! I Said; 12) Vamos; 13) Iʼm Amazed; 14) Brick Is Red.

General verdict: A punk-pop / kid-rock masterpiece of viciously aggressive childlike innocence.

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.

Pixies: Come On Pilgrim

PIXIES: COME ON PILGRIM (1987)

1) Caribou; 2) Vamos; 3) Isla De Encanta; 4) Ed Is Dead; 5) The Holiday Song; 6) Nimrodʼs Son; 7) Iʼve Been Tired; 8) Levitate Me.

General verdict: Short as heck, but already contains every single seed of the greatness to come.

If Come On Pilgrim fails to immediately establish the Pixies as one of the most major acts of their generation, then we have no one to blame but Ivo Watts-Russell, the president of 4AD, who was given the entire «Purple Tape» — the results of the bandʼs first major recording session, with 17 tracks in all — but cautiously decided to cherry-pick only a sample of it and release it in mini-LP format, with a UK-only release that was, allegedly, fairly strange for a US-based band, but apparently little had changed in the way of things over those twenty years since Jimi Hendrix had to prove his worth by jumping across the Atlantic.

Even so, the ridiculously short length is just about the only major complaint I could raise against the Pixiesʼ debut — because even these eight short songs suffice to let you know that here was another band all set to change the world. The first thing that comes to mind is that it is all but impossible to put a label on the kind of music they are playing. It seems to be equal parts «pop» and «rock», but it is certainly not «power pop» in a Cheap Trick sense — the guitars have none of that thick arena crunch which can sound so uplifting in skilled hands and so plebeian in not so skilled ones. More apt is the often heard assessment of the music as a hybrid of «surf rock» and «punk rock», but that, too, might give one unwarranted visions of the Ramones playing ʽSurfinʼ Birdʼ when in reality the Pixies sounded nothing like that.

Why donʼt we go straight to the source material? ʽCaribouʼ opens with a thrice repeated flashy little guitar flourish that would not have sounded out of place on some late Sixtiesʼ Californian folk rock album — except this one is lo-fi and distorted in prime underground Eighties fashion. From there, the guitar goes into epic folk-blues mode (think ʽHouse Of The Rising Sunʼ), except it keeps staggering and stuttering around in pseudo-drunk DIY mode. When the vocals kick in, they come in short, simple, minimalistic bursts, evoking the old beatnik spirit both in form and essence ("I live cement / I hate this street / Give dirt to me / I bite lament" is almost Allen Ginsberg, though it probably rhymes a bit too much for him) — and the wobbly man-woman unison between Black Francis and Kim Deal gives the song an oddly universalist atmosphere despite only featuring two people. Itʼs a mournful dirge that can easily turn into rebellious anthem, a creepy mystical incantation that can mutate into prime anger — and it never takes itself too seriously, like the Birthday Party or something like that.

That last part is actually essential, as is the bandʼs infatuation with elements of surf music. The Pixies introduced a level of «meta» into rock and pop music that few, if any, other Eighties acts had dared to, or even thought to introduce. When you think back to all the non-mainstream music from those days, what comes to mind is probably the hardcore punk scene, the industrial and experimental noise bands, the starry-eyed or bitter-cynical college rockers, all or most of them bent on stressing the sincerity and immediacy of their sound as opposed to the artificial gloss of synth-pop, hair metal, and power balladry. But what makes Come On Pilgrim so awesome is that it has a little bit of it all —hardcore, noise, idealism, cynicism — yet always leaves you a way out so you do not end up pledging all your life and all your values to any single one of those elements. Serious and playful, sincere and ironic at the same time, all the while pursuing crazier and crazier ideas of musical synthesis that are valuable inside and outside their social context.

Thus, ʽVamosʼ is at the same time a bitter satire on stereotypes of Hispanic immigrants in New England ("estaba pensando sobreviviendo con mi sister en New Jersey" — no way this song wouldnʼt get these guys «canceled» in modern times if they had a million dollars and a million Instagram subscribers), and an innovative and exciting experiment in guitar playing. Amusingly, its structure reminds me of that old Amboy Dukesʼ reinterpretation of ʽBaby Please Donʼt Goʼ: like Ted Nugent in his psychedelic period, Joey Santiago here is all bent on making his guitar go as wild as possible over a very basic, very fast, very headbanging rhythm track, and even though this early version is shorter and less efficient than either the extended variant on Surfer Rosa or their even more extended and crazy legendary live performances, itʼs still a lot of fun — and, of course, that «bumblebee siren» bended riff coming in at key points in the song is easily the most unforgettable single moment of the entire mini-LP.

Perhaps most of the things attempted on these songs would be done better later, on the Pixiesʼ first two full-length LPs, but this should not detract from the fact that there is not a single bad song here — and by «bad» I actually mean «not containing at least one or two fresh musical ideas, let alone the lyrical content». ʽIsla De Encantaʼ mixes a hardcore punk riff with crazy Angus Young-style guitar solos, stop-and-start techniques, and more of Francisʼ hilarious Spanglish (all those Puerto Rican experiences paying off). ʽEd Is Deadʼ would later be reshaped into the much more memorable ʽWaves Of Mutilationʼ, but Joeyʼs use of sustain still makes it into a gaping psychedelic monster in its own rights. ʽThe Holiday Songʼ has one of the bandʼs happiest punk-pop riffs shadowing lyrics full of references to such happy themes as masturbation and incest. ʽNimrodʼs Sonʼ, I believe, actually steals the melody of Motörheadʼs  ʽAce Of Spadesʼ, but plays it in a more retro, almost Fifties-like fashion, with another story of an «incestuous union» tacked on top of the crazy beat (does Black Francis know something about his family history, I wonder, that he has not explicitly shared with the public?). And while ʽIʼve Been Tiredʼ is more of a spasmodic indictment of brainless radicals ("sheʼs a real left-winger ʼcause she been down south and held peasants in her arms") than a musical breakthrough, it still ends the record on a ska-punk note with lots of fun interplay between bass, rhythm, and lead.

In my humble opinion, the historical significance of Come On Pilgrim is easy to define: simply put, it was the last time in the known history of pop / rock that a small band with a classic, traditional Beatlesque lineup (rhythm guitar, lead guitar, bass, drums) was able to come up with a sound completely its own and completely overturning existing models and stereotypes. Itʼs all simple as heck, really, but for some reason nobody else had that kind of genius simplicity in 1987, and nobody — to the best of my knowledge — has been able to come up with another kind of genius simplicity with the same bunch of instruments ever since. In this way, you could argue that this music set the stage for the last important pop/rock revolution in known history — and even if I may be pushing it, I donʼt care, because the more people try to hear this record from this angle of view, the better.