The Pixies

[Lina]

got hair in a girl that flows to her bones
and a comb in her pocket if the wind gets blown
stripes on her eyes when she walks slow
but her face falls down when she go, go, go
black tear falling on my lazy queen
gotta tattooed tit, say number 13
- No. 13 baby

Ahh the Pixies. What a band. What a sound. Doolittle is the only album I've ever owned where I love every single second of every single song, with the rest of the albums a very close second in this regard. I have my stack of Pixies albums sitting beside me - Doolittle is in the worst shape. Bought when I was 17, the CD doesn't play the first three songs any more, it's scratched and battered and it's been moved from country Northern NSW to communes and share houses and every other place I've ever been. I will never throw this CD away, but I think I'll have to get a new one so I can actually have the full playable CD again.

http://forum.zgeek.com/gallery/files/1/7/1/Pixies3.gifWhat I love most about the Pixies is their ability to go from chaotic musical madness to pure blissful pop. I love to juxtapose La La Love You with Something Against You. I love how their music is gritty and sparkling and smooth and manic and wild all at the same time. The lyrics are dark and humorous and sometimes downright non-sensical. But that doesn't matter. It just works.

I get a lot of memories when I play the Pixies and it's so fitting that those memories are both dark and beautiful. When the Pixies were all shiny and new for me was when I started buying their albums in 1994 or so. This was a particularly difficult period of my life - basically I was an unwilling witness to people I loved going down the agonizing downward spiral that is heroin. My friend Sam and I had enough and left town like a barefoot, tattooed Thelma and Louise. We travelled all around Tasmania and the Pixies is the theme music to that adventure. I remember stopping at the gorgeous Huon Valley and watching the river - the song All Over the World will always bring back that scene.

http://forum.zgeek.com/gallery/files/1/7/1/Pixies2.gifIt’s proven such a hard task for me to try to elaborate on what I like about the Pixies music. Personally, I think that’s a great compliment to the band – that I’m at a loss to describe the sound in mere words. I can only urge the uninitiated to pick up an album or even just download a song or two (legally, of course - a curse upon those who rip off the Pixies!) and elaborate for yourself.

The full albums are (in order): Come On Pilgrim, Surfer Rosa, Doolittle, Bossanova, Trompe Le Monde. Whilst everyone goes on about Doolittle (quite rightly), that’s not to say the rest of the albums are inferior. Surfer Rosa is a stunning album of rapidly shifting styles and features Kim Deal much more than in Doolittle. Which is a good thing, in case you’re wondering. Bossanova and Trompe Le Monde are always seriously underrated. These two are brilliant, albeit very different, in their own right. And Come On Pilgrim is a raw Pixies delight.

I own a Pixies compilation and whilst I usually don’t mind compilations I don’t feel that they do the Pixies justice. Every album is it’s own individual experience and has it’s own sound. In saying that, the live album off the dual disk Death to the Pixies compilation is fantastic, and well worth the purchase.

The Pixies seem to me to be one of those bands that are just magic, that are just meant to be, that influence so many musicians. I've always thought that part of the reason for their greatness is their wild confidence in their own music - there's no please or thank you about what they do. It's more like here's some music, we think it's awesome. If you don't like it then fuck off. We don't care.

http://forum.zgeek.com/gallery/files/1/7/1/Pixies1.gifIf you have never heard the Pixies, then please go and buy Doolittle. Start there and don't stop. You won't regret it. If you buy Doolittle and hate it, never fear, I will gladly take it off your hands. But I'm not going to hold my breath.

My very favourite tracks are: Cactus, No. 13 Baby, Where Is My Mind, Down To The Well, Tame (cookie, I think you're tame), Silver (such silky darkness, god I love that guitar), Hey, U-Mass (teenage angst baby!), Wave of Mutilation, Something Against You, Gouge Away....honestly, there's just far too many to list!

[moonbuggy]

I like a lot of Frank Black's solo stuff too.

[Lina]

Yeah, I like some of his solo stuff too. Not as much as I like other off-shoots of the Pixies like The Breeders, though. Kim Deal is a legend :)

[kleph]

the pixies are quite close to my heart as well. they blasted out of the sea of mediocre that the college airwaves were awash with in the late 1980s and got your attention right quick. (a lot of us romanticize the indie music from that era but, as a long suffering dj, i can assure you, there was a ton of crappy shit we had to endure as well)

there was something primal and powerful and disturbingly glorious to the whole thing. they touched your inner id but had a strange way of resonating with the song of your heart as well.

here is an essay i penned about doolittle quite some time ago. i was hoping to run it as a review all its own but it makes more sense as a footnote to lina's take on the band.


Nothing less than the revolution come to your doorstep.

These guys had been biting at the fringes of the alternative scene for a few years when this record came out and kicked more ass than anyone thought humanly possible. When Black Francis screams and the band kicks in, it's like a white hot bar shoved straight into the center of your skull.

You had better believe this baby leaves a scar.

Doolittle is the most balanced record produced by an immensely talented band. The early Pixies records (which totally rock) have an amateurish quality at times and, conversely, the later records (which totally rock) tend to be a bit too polished. Doolittle is neither.

This is a band at the height of its powers showing a confident assurance but with a just-under-the-surface rawness as well.

The power ranges from the primitive fury of Black's vocals served up on a hot bed of Joey Santiago's guitars to the raw threatening rumble of Kim Deal's (the coolest woman in the world) bass punctuated by the stattaco of David Lovering's drum work.

Those ingredients produced pulse pounders such as "Tame" as well as the ultra-super-heavy "I Bleed." And, just because they could, they threw in the hipper-than-thou-art "La La Love You." Try to not follow along with the whistles the second time you hear it.

The Pixies were about power and the glory of noise. They were the sum total of the alternative music scenes search for pure power. After a decade of metal hair bands and screeching flying V guitar nonsense it is hard to believe someone got to the point and simply rocked your ass off. They knew instinctively the axiom offered by Lou Reed that high energy did not necessarily mean fast.

But Doolittle is more than an exercise in being loud and powerful, it is a damn thoughtful work where what seems like tossed away lyrics come back to haunt you when you least expect it. When a simply phrased verse veers horribly wrong with the imagery at the end. This is a record where the music tells you the story as much as the lyrics themselves.

And that songwriting was never better as well proven by the patented "kleph cover test." Witness how songs like "Wave of Mutilation" and "Gouge Away" lose none of their appeal and power when slowed down and stripped down as the band proceeded to do live and on singles collections.

How important is this record to me? If I ever make the movie of my life, "Debaser" is the song I'm having played during the opening credits.

[ewe2]

Nice contrast between lina's and kleph's take on Doolittle.

When I first heard Bone Machine, I don't think I've ever been so confused by a song in my life. And it's easy to understate the effect Gigantic had on many of us. Even back then Frank was tossing idiomatic Spanish into his lyrics without a second thought for the confusion of gringos.

But Doolittle is practically perfect. Apart from three songs I love every track. They captured the insane joy of rage. Kim Deal's vocals frighten the hell out of me far more than Frank's. There is at times literally NO restraint, it's the most amazing control, a unique on-off switch. It's the blueprint for a dozen horror movie soundtracks. It makes Helter Skelter look amateurish.

To paraphrase Hendrix "You can never hear thrash-anything music again". They rewrote the rules.

[Lina]

I'm curious to know which three tracks on Doolittle you don't like? Just curiousity...I won't lynch you or anything :D

[ewe2]

Not that i really hate them, it was either through overplaying or a song's position in the running order just got in the way. For instance Silver is great but it comes right at a point where i just want to skip and get on to the loud mad stuff :) I love Hey and Gouge Away but I also think they're a wee bit repetitive on the ear if you play them a lot so I tend to skip them too. I'm always thinking of sections of Hey sufficiently that I don't need to actually hear it, its the curse of my radiohead brain. Oooh! said the man to the lady...

[Lina]

heh...I think the reason I love Silver, and La La Love You so much is that it does exactly what you don't like about it. It gives me a bit of a break from the manic tracks...little oasis of sound, if you will. That's the beauty of Doolittle, though, everyone gets something different from it!

[ShinymetalASS]

I don't know... there's just something mildly disturbing about a man with bigger boobs than me....

My other half and my best mate are both mad pixies fans.

They are also the only two people I know who like the pixies.

Then again, I'm the only person I know who likes Kyuss, so... glass houses and all that :)

[ewe2]

Don't get me wrong, La La Love You is on the list, and I wouldn't take away from the spooky Spanish atmosphere of Silver; but one makes the cut and one doesn't for my current playlist :) My listening habits when I'm on the computer are different to my iPod use, though, so those songs that miss out are usually on there.

[Canalien]

I was driving down the road with a friend in an old '78 Datsun I used to have years ago listening to a Pixies compilation I had made. Where Is My Mind came on and I began to tell him about a great idea I had for the end of a film. Just as some great twist was revealed to the audience, Where Is My Mind would come on, and as "with your feet on the air..." began, the film would immediately cut to credits leaving the the audience dumbstruck. I was so proud of that, in my head it would work perfectly. The details be damned, they would come later.

My friend turned to me and said "Fight Club man, they did that in Fight Club"

I began beating the steering wheel and thrashing about cursing David Fincher's name, wishing every pox and damnation onto his eternal soul. "Damn you Fincher, you plagiarizing hack! Damn your dirty rotten teeth forever!"

I came to the realization soon after that it was probably me who had stole Fincher's idea after seeing the movie, and then realizing its effectiveness, subconsciously forgetting that it was his in the first place and claiming it as my own. Scary thought.

Good story though.

[Lina]

I don't know... there's just something mildly disturbing about a man with bigger boobs than me....

Then again, I'm the only person I know who likes Kyuss, so... glass houses and all that :)

The size of the man doth not tarnish the music he makes ;)

Seriously, everyone has their own taste and the Pixies just don't do it for some (this I know from first hand experience of people clapping their hands over their ears and shouting 'noise, noise noise' when I've had the Pixies playing :D )

You should do a review of Kyuss...can't say I've heard much about them...

[Canalien]

they're now known as Queens of the Stone Age... kind of... but I'll leave that to Shiny...

[kleph]

lina is eight

[Canalien]

speaking of monkeys what ever happened to pumpy?

[Lina]

Don't you hate it when someone deletes their post and then you respond to it?

:D

Pumpy not gone. Pumpy just doesn't feel the love any more :pumpy:

To keep this on topic: I did a quick vote whilst I was out tonight. Nobody else outta 12 people where Pixies fans. Oh well. One can only try.

[Canalien]

this pumpy's gone to heaven...

haha! give it a sing, it actually works

[gunsella]

i am grateful to the pixies cos without them one of my favourite bands would never have existed - the clouds. (review will follow....later).

i never realised i was a pixies fan until a friend gave me a copy of their return gig at brixton a coupla years ago and i knew every damn song. now i'm in, just a little late!

[kleph]

good christ, every time i think i understand how awesome these guys were, i put on one of their disks and get the icy chill across my scalp and down my spine and go "goodness gracious!"

have you had your dose of the pixies today?

[MisterBishi]

Where is my mind > *

[ewe2]

yr bones got a little machine

[Canalien]

i just got my hit...


outside there's a boxcar waiting....

[MisterBishi]

i just got my hit...


outside there's a boxcar waiting....

That's the first pixies song I ever heard. It's my second favourite just behind Where is my mind.

[Canalien]

add to that Dig for Fire and you've got my top 3

[ewe2]

i'm in...a state

[Canalien]

necromancy... saw them live in April. best show ever.

[Replica]

I love this album so much. Frank screaming Tame is almost worth the price of admission alone.