Sonic Youth - Bad Moon Rising/Evol/Sister vs Pixies - Come On Pilgrim/Surfer Rosa/Doolittle

See also Sonic Youth - Sonic Youth/Confusion Is Sex/ Sonic-Death Sonic-Youth Live vs Swans - Filth/Cop/Greed

Sonic Youth and it isn't close.

Pixies captured a lot of hearts this side of the pond; they’d run away with this if Irish and Brits were the only ones voting.

That's a tough one. Gonna need to sit with this for a bit.

and I do like Pixies, just never wanna listen to them.

SY by a country mile.

SY by millions and millions

^^

That’s two ILM polls in a row where I voted for SY

i was a huuuge pixies fan for the first two records but i've gotta say, there were a couple of tracks on doolittle that sowed the tiny seeds of contempt for them in my heart

i remember travelling up from sleepy old basingstoke with my mates to see pixies + throwing muses (+ the junior manson slags!) in london in 1988-ish and i was super excited standing in the queue because it was the first time in my life i'd ever seen actual people wearing sonic youth t-shirts :)

awwww <3

first time I heard Pixies I thought they were the Violent Femmes going electric

bad moon rising is my least favorite of these, but sister is my very favorite!

i would probably be betraying my teenaged self if i voted against pixies tho. been a while since i put on come on pilgrim. "caribou" is still one of the first songs i play on the rare occasions when i pick up a guitar

I’m kinda confused by the random 3 run release SY selection. Like, if you’re going to do the debut EP and first 2 Pixies records I would think you’d have done SY’s debut EP, Confusion is Sex, Bad Moon Rising.

Nm, didn’t see the the note at top.

These days SY are pole stars in my firmament, but back in the day the early Pixies albums were like a firecracker going off under my hicksville ass, they probably changed my outlook more. It’s a pity they pissed it away by reuniting.
Also, co-sign on being unable to resist picking out “Caribou” on any guitar.

Kim vs Kim = tie
Charles vs Thurston = charles
Joey vs Lee = tie
David vs Bob = bob

I missed my window to care about the Pixies. When Surfer Rosa came out I was listening to Big Black and Ministry and Slayer and the Butthole Surfers and Public Enemy and Ice-T. And honestly I didn't even know they had three more albums after that. I saw them live in December 1990 (opening for Jane's Addiction) and they didn't even register.

xp pfffft

Pixies possibly the single most overrated band of the 80s imo

yeah I was a smidge too old for The Pixies, was already a total SY fanatic by 1986

like, they are not even remotely in the same league here

https://i.imgur.com/86oxlll.jpeg

The Kims transcend both bands

i went pixies but i love both. i think if it was evol/sister/daydream i would have gone SY

xxp ok lol fair

i think if it was evol/sister/daydream i would have gone SY

I'll go SY anyway but agree, having this start at bad moon makes this closer than you'd expect

HEY NOW

that is my holy trinity

amazed so many ppl are saying “not even close”. one of these albums is doolittle ffs

pixies changed my life and taste so i’m going with them

I believe my BMR love has been well documented on this board, it is my fave

sorry ivy, I have never been moved by anything other than "Gigantic" (I do love The Breeders, but yeah SY changed my life so them)

amazed so many ppl are saying “not even close”. one of these albums is doolittle ffs

― ivy., Tuesday, October 8, 2024

hi, I'm one of them! Sister meant way more to me.

Sonic Youth and it isn't close.

― the talented mr pimply (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, October 8, 2024 4:35 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglinkSY by a country mile.

― stirmonster, Tuesday, October 8, 2024 5:01 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

SY by millions and millions

― Elvis Telecom, Tuesday, October 8, 2024 5:04 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

^^

― go polish your nose ring (sleeve), Tuesday, October 8, 2024 5:04 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

^^^^^^^^^^^

Doolittle's great but come on this isn't even a question

SY, and the reason it's not even close is because I've never listened to a Pixies

I love both bands, but SY are handicapped by the inclusion of Bad Moon Rising, which has never clicked with me at all. So this is pretty easily Pixies for me.

Listened to all of these back in the day but BMR is the only one I've revisited in the past 30 years.

also unpopular opinion here (maybe everywhere???) but for me ‘90s sy is mostly preferable to ‘80s

It isn't

And 2000s is best.

“ I missed my window to care about the Pixies.”

By the time I understood who Pixies were I was already a Nirvana fan, and that was as doing it for me.

I vividly remember finally hearing a best of in some friend’s dorm room and being like “oh, that’s what everyone is going on about! I kinda get it!”

Then I never much listened to Pixies again.

Also BMR is a top five SY album for me

Sonic Youth and it isn't close.

― the talented mr pimply (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, October 8, 2024 4:35 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglinkSY by a country mile.

― stirmonster, Tuesday, October 8, 2024 5:01 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

SY by millions and millions

― Elvis Telecom, Tuesday, October 8, 2024 5:04 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

^^

― go polish your nose ring (sleeve), Tuesday, October 8, 2024 5:04 PM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

^^^^^^^^^^^

Doolittle's great but come on this isn't even a question

― Deflatormouse, Tuesday, October 8, 2024 8:06 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

i'd rather play sister 3 times than listen to any pixies album all the way through

Will Smith is wholly irrelevant, and it's not like he's been calling good games either. Just put in Barnes.

god this is just as insane as the black flag poll to me

BMR is the best. Agree with sleeve: “Gigantic” is great, everything else is indifferent. Not close is right.

Austin Barnes could be an Richard Edson stand in

I nearly cracked my screen to smash the SY button.

I nearly cracked my screen to smash the SY button.

Steve Shasta wrong thread

You couldn’t pay me to see Pixies in 2024; I would walk 50 miles to see SY in 2024; how badly did Frank Black mess up his halcyon years? utterly

Voting Pixies, *poot*, no contest. Before the fall

And 2000s is best.

― the talented mr pimply (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)
credibility = 0

how else can i pile onto this psycho vitriol shit-fest? this place is fucking insane

Please add a Waterboys option for the previous poster

alfred otm all over this thread.

pixies SUUUUUUUUCK. hey, let's all talk shit about those pixies! sy haven't ever been overrated in the slightest bit!

suck? come on

come on pilgrim is a great time but gotta go with sy

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/416duz7vZYL._AC_.jpg

i picked pixies.

if it had been throwing muses as a choice i would have voted for them too.

i love evol and sister though. they definitely meant a lot to teen me for sure.

These are the three best Pixies records and the three hippest SY records.

Swapping Daydream Nation for BMR would make it a clean win for the Youth, but this feels pretty close to me....

i probably would have voted for bringing home the bait/cloud one/don't get any on you over SY too. #marnie4ever

i was really lucky that i could buy every Homestead record at my local Record World in Brookfield, CT.

xp agreed

this is about as perfect of a debut run (Pixies)run vs. (choose your perfect 3 SY album) run.

the proper poll should have been the SY run when Kim/Thurston were living in Western MA vs. Doolittle->Trompe Le Monde

Pixies were fresh and enthusiastic but didn't mix styles and influences and methods from all over the place like SY did. Because of that innovation and importance to the progression of music, I voted SY. Still a fan of Pixies though.

didn't mix styles and influences and methods from all over the place like SY did

ok, I agree

think i already said this before on this board but Giant Sand already made the best Pixies song in 1986

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TE6SCr-dKWU

sonic youth were a howling subway car, the pixies were one of those herky-jerky hand-pump railroad trucks from ye olde timey western movies

i’m gonna start flagging posts

i went pixies but i love both. i think if it was evol/sister/daydream i would have gone SY

― gman59, Tuesday, October 8, 2024 10:28 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

amazed so many ppl are saying “not even close”. one of these albums is doolittle ffs

― ivy., Wednesday, October 9, 2024 12:57 AM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Wholeheartedly endorse these posts.

sister / whitey album / master=dik is the real tryptich

I had no idea that my 3 fave SY albums vs my 3 fave Pixies albums would create such a fuss. I thought it would be a close poll.

I really did not expect, nor understand, the sheer hatred for Pixies on this thread.

Surfer Rosa is one of the albums ffs

i’m gonna start flagging posts

haha

(but SY no question)

I did like the first Pixies mini lp sounding like the Birthday Party playing REM and the songwriting. But Pixies seemed to repeat performances without much improvisation whereas Sonic Youth incorporated impro at a basic level. So I enjoyed Pixies but Sonic Youth seemed to be a continual revelation when I was getting into them. They also influenced a lot more and brought new bands to light for ages.Took emerging bands on tour with them, had excellent record collections with massive diversity of influence and basically rocked.
So while Sonic Youth did show some of their influences quite clearly they always seemed to bung in a lot of other influences and themselves at all points.
I think SY quite definitely.

And 2000s is best.

― the talented mr pimply (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)

credibility = 0

how else can i pile onto this psycho vitriol shit-fest? this place is fucking insane

― Lowell N. Behold'n, Tuesday, October 8, 2024

Good!

I like what SY do with sound a lot more.

But the Pixies wrote better songs.

Sound always wins for me but maybe that's where some of the conflict is coming from.

What I adore about Pixies classic run is the balance of “dangerous” and “goofball”. No other band achieved it— not even later Pixies or Black solo. The closest was Fire Of Love, maybe? Certainly not that Giant Sand track. Or Bowie in his “I want to be Frank Black” phase (Tin Machine).

Some lightning was bottled here on these Pixies albums imo! Sonic Youth gets their silver, here

"They also influenced a lot more and brought new bands to light for ages"

i feel like the 90s was loaded with post-pixies rock though. the pixies helped invent the 90s as far as indie/rock goes. i never felt that way about sonic youth. their branca sound didn't always translate well or easily to other bands.

yeah, when i first heard pixies i loved it because it was like a funnier gun club but still had gnashing of the teeth.

The only albums here I like all the way through are Surfer Rosa and Evol.

Im curious: Were early Pixies fan disappointed at all by Doolittle at the time? It’s not bad and has several excellent/great songs but…it’s just more ordinary musically. The weird angles are all sanded off by Gil. And when they do sound weirder (“uh said the man” or whatever) I don’t like it.

I don't know. I was unaware of all non-chart music then but I do know one thing is that a LOT of people heard Doolittle & Daydream Nation first and most of those people I know still think they are the best albums by each.

in 1991 I moved here and one of my new mates loaned me Surfer Rosa & Doolittle as well as a couple of Husker Du lps and some classic thrash. I was just starting to get into listening to full albums rather than 'the singles' and I thought Surfer Rosa was actually better than Doolittle but otoh debaser and monkey goes to heaven were on it and i loved those especially. Both great albums though but I still think Surfer Rosa is 'better'.

Ftr Sister was the first SY I bought and purely because it was on SST as I was getting into a lot of bands on that label.

that mustve been 1991 as well

I mean, I like this era of the Pixies, but this is the easiest one yet. That's an incredible SY run right there.

Haven't all these other polls been just SST bands?

Anyway, this is a tricky one. As far as three album runs go, Pixies plateaued with "Doolittle," and I say that as a huge fan of literally everything the original band recorded. But Sonic Youth, they remained compelling for years. So we're talking re: Pixies a complete package that more or less encapsulates them, vs. SY, which offers awesome pieces of an even bigger awesome puzzle.

So I think I agree with

evol/sister/daydream i would have gone SY

Im curious: Were early Pixies fan disappointed at all by Doolittle at the time? It’s not bad and has several excellent/great songs but…it’s just more ordinary musically. The weird angles are all sanded off by Gil. And when they do sound weirder (“uh said the man” or whatever) I don’t like it.

I loved Come On Pilgrim and Surfer Rosa, when Doolittle came out I liked it but not as much as it seemed a slicker and more commercial version of what they'd done before. Especially "Here Comes Your Man" which I loathed. I was into the Albini sound at the time! After that I was off the bus pretty quickly, did I even own the next album (whatever it was)? Possibly, possibly not. After I saw them play one of the most grudging, "yeah yeah where's the fee" gigs I've ever witnessed (probably around 1989) I couldn't be bothered any more. And that was that.

Trompe Le Monde is the best Pixies album imo

"Im curious: Were early Pixies fan disappointed at all by Doolittle at the time?"

i was not. i loved the songs. pixies one of those rare rock bands where i basically like all their songs. for real. i mean up to and including trompe le monde. i might like some way more but i never disliked a song really.

on the other hand, once SY hit the 90s i didn't really care for any of their songs. all of a sudden the bad murky beatnik lyrics were WAY up front and i could understand them and i wan't 16 and on acid. also, i knew more about them. when i was a kid they were scary new york drug hippies. then i learned that thurston grew up 5 minutes from me and was just a nerd like me but with a much bigger record collection.

"Trompe Le Monde is the best Pixies album imo"

surfer rosa for me. its a great indie movie.

I think I like SY's early run of major label records because, yeah, the vocals were often lifted out of the murk but so were the guitars, maybe more so, which I felt benefited even more from the sharper recording. I listened to "Goo" on headphones a few weeks ago, and there were so many cool studio details. Not that that was some epitome of hi-fi or anything.

I think I always preferred Pixies lyrics, a nice mix of toss-off, gibberish and scary. And A+ screaming.

Moore has a house here in Miami-Dade County these days. Coral Gables!

https://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/article287358050.html

whaaat

He was born there? That is a surprise for some reason

Bought Dolittle the day it came out, and yeah it seemed more ordinary in a way, but that polish and the tightness of every single track was shocking in a way -- how did this loose soup of influences become such a cohesive thing so quick? Still love Surfer Rosa more. Also, like Scott, SY in the 90s provided all the same letdowns.

I'd rather hear an indie band cop the Pixies too. Sonic Youth influence really requires a lot of balance and chemistry that SY couldn't always get.

yeah, when i first heard pixies i loved it because it was like a funnier gun club but still had gnashing of the teeth.

― scott seward, Wednesday, October 9, 2024 3:12 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

meant to add about the dynamic thing having come from the Gun Club but I forgot, a bit fluey today.
& I think that's the influence people keep saying is the Pixies.

i feel like jack white didn't need to add much to his white stripes thing after hearing gun club and pixies. just a little bloooooooze.

just voted for the pixies

The Pixies were so influential that despite Husker Du being one of the biggest influences on the Pixies, within a few years the Pixies were influencing Bob Mould.

counterpoint: their influence was bad

Hmm, I hadn't thought about it before, but when you put it that way ...

Voting Sonic Youth here, but this is really close, I think I just got a bit more out of Sonic Youth over the years, even if just counting these albums

i don't think the pixies influence was bad at all. punchy pop punky rock with male/female vox. i don't think i ever heard stuff in the 90s and thought: "ugh, that's just bad pixies."

xpost

i have also always just loved kim deal's voice so much. kim gordon...not so much. having said that, "brother james" is probably my favorite sonic youth song.

I like the early and later phases of SY more especially Bad moon rising > evol and to an extent Sister, and ATL > Murray st

even though most of their records have parts i like just as much i think those phases emphasize their tactile delicacy and tertiary shades that get swallowed a little by the bigger scale

I tend to think A Thousand Leaves is my favorite even though I sometimes suspect that's only because of overexposure to Evol especially

but really because it's their most poetic and visual and has an impact that feels closer to those other artforms than to music sometimes

i haven't listened to the Pixies much since i was 20 years old for some reason

the Breeders are a different story obv

I think the relative slickness of "Doolittle" ironically made abrasive guitar more acceptable in the mainstream. Whether that was good or bad is up for debate, I guess, but I'd rather hear something noisy on the radio than not. I wonder, if there were no Pixies, but there were a Breeders, if something like "Cannonball" would still have been all over the place? Maybe!

pixies help set the stage for grunge and then they were done before they could have cashed in on all the grunge money! though they did end up on a million movie soundtracks in the 90s so they never really went away. or at least it feels like they did. maybe it wasn't a million. they did a lot in 5 years though.
kim cashed in on the alternapalooza anyway.

https://www.cracked.com/article_32808_how-where-is-my-mind-became-hollywoods-laziest-trope.html

1992 the year grunge broke!

Look at these dorks* (2/12/1992):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkowlKh_0wY (charles going for the emo growl ~2:10-2:20, first time on national TV?)

letterman (9/5/2012) even dorkier (!) despite the "noise", thankful for Lee to hold it down lol.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qpx20yJ4KoA

*except for EDFeldman

I like what SY do with sound a lot more.

But the Pixies wrote better songs.

Sound always wins for me but maybe that's where some of the conflict is coming from.

― xyzzzz__

this is my feeling, more or less. SY is the more "interesting" of the two; their 90s output (EJSTNS/Washing Machine/ATL, in particular) was revelatory. Pixies was more accessible (i went backwards through their discography, beginning with Bossanova, then Trompe le Monde, and the first couple of Frank Black albums, while still in high school) ... Pixies went over better in the car, with friends. their music has more of a general, melodic & dramatic rock appeal. off-topic: those first two FB albums hold a special place in my heart. we managed to catch them (frank black and the catholics) twice at Toad's place in New Haven, Ct. - both times it seemed like they were touring the TotY songs (94-95) ... attended Lollapalooza in 1995 (i didn't know pavement yet, and was only familiar with, or excited to see Superchunk) ... Sonic Youth (though), having played the songs of WM to an almost empty amphitheater (Meadows, in Hartford Ct.), were electrifying.

i couldn't say which band i'd vote for in this poll, as i'm not attached to 80s sy (or pixies) ... i was taken aback by the seeming / seething resentment some harbor towards Pixes, and i overreacted.

I’m baffled by how adamantly against the Pixies many of these posts are

Me too and I really did not expect it.

I guess it's because Frank Black comes across as such a prick

I like the Pixies, just not as much as those SY albums.

i think the pixies just wore out a lot of goodwill they'd banked up. but their first four albums are so great

i thought we were polling albums and not if bands did or didn't wear out their goodwill

Like, if I'm going whole catalog, this is SY in a walk. But I cannot deny how massive of an effect those first 3 Pixies releases were for me, even though I'd probably throw on one of BMR, EVOL or Sister before any of those Pixies albums these days.

pixies were awesome. i listened to those albums a zillion times. never saw them live. people i knew always told me they were kinda stiff and boring live. that they just did rote versions of their songs. so i never made an attempt to see them. and i loved the first two breeders albums. and i bought the first two frank black albums and barely played them. and that was it for me. so my memories of pixies were mostly untarnished all these years. i ignored any latter-day stuff. i think frank black came in my store once and i didn't even recognize him. he lives in amherst. i only thought of it after the fact because of the name on his credit card.

i loved all the pixies singles too. all the b-sides. they were a cool band! and fun.

I guess it's because Frank Black comes across as such a prick

― one by one the wombles are dying (Matt #2), Wednesday, October 9, 2024 2:40 PM (fifty-seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

how does thurston moore come across?

yeah, lol. i have a half dozen stories from friends/associates that had run-ins w/ Thurston and Kim during my 00s going to college in W. Mass and not a single one put them in a charitable light.

we should poll indie band alpha dickheads some time. black vs moore vs byrne vs mascis vs malkmus etc. who would be the worst to be in a band with.

thurston has always been nice to me. but i'm really cool so that helps. :)

j. is definitely a tough nut to crack but if you just brought up some weird vintage guitar pedal to him he'd be your best friend.

vs Corgan vs farrell
xp

xp owning a good record shop probably gets you in their good graces rather quickly :)

I only met Moore once, at a Peter Brötzmann show at Tonic, but he was nice enough. Just a tall free jazz nerd. I've also only ever seen Henry Rollins' dorky side, at least offstage.

i somehow ended up in a backstage room alone with kim once when bunnybrains were opening for SY in the early 90s and i was completely nervous and uncomfortable so just to say something i lied and said i really liked the harry crews album and then i ran.

but everyone i know around here who knows her like nace will tell you that she is super-nice and normal but also can just be super-shy around people she doesn't know and this can come across as frosty to people.

I feel like the Pixies did a lot of damage to their own rep with the neverending reunion tours and the terrible Indie Cindy album. I will say that I've found each successive reunion album to be better than the previous (while still none a patch on the original run), but it seems like their overall reputation took a nosedive in the 2010s.

I wonder where it would be if they would have just ended it after that first 2004 reunion tour (which I thought was great!).

(wait I have to amend that post, I forgot about Doggerel which wasn't great and ended the trend of steadily improving reunion albums)

what if they had made two or three more albums at the height of grunge that included kim's breeders stuff. they would have been huuuuugemongous. probably.

i had an absolute blast seeing them during their initial reunion run. playing at UMass with Mission of Burma opening!

Yeah, I had a lot of fun at the Chicago stop on that tour, but probably would have been extra cool to see "UMass" in UMass.

"Bam Thwok" deluxe reissue due soo I would assume

*soon

I like Frank Black/Black Francis solo albums better than any I’ve heard by SY members.

Frank Black's first solo album is my favorite thing he ever did, including with the Pixies.

That's not an opinion I've seen before

I bought it after TLM, its precursor. I had to get used to Doolittle and Surfer Rosa.

I remember when it came out and the UK critics seemed disappointed which I couldn't understand but then again they didn't seem to care for TLM and I thought that was a great album. It was the only Pixies album I got when it first came out.

I wish I had better words to describe it all. Surfer Rosa/Pilgrim are off-balance and careening, Bossanova/Doolittle feel like they're bargaining for classic status (and win their case), TLM and FB is when Black started to play it safer (and it worked), and by Teenager Of The Year (which I still love, but is where I get off the train) the songs were mostly transparent jokes, instead of "secret jokes". "Vamos a jugar por la playa" as a shouted chorus will always hit me harder than rhyming "abstract house" with "abstract mouse"

I feel like Sonic Youth was just starting to hit their stride with Sister while the Pixies were at full speed right out the gate on Pilgrim. I was square in the middle of the crowd mentioned above that discovered both bands with the Doolittle & Daydream Nation releases and I didn't really feel the need to go backwards into Sonic Youth's catalog, but in 1989, I needed to hear and loved everything that the Pixies did. Sonic Youth grew on me in the 90's as the Pixies disintegrated, but this poll is a sprint not marathon.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I respect the arguments for SY and might agree on aesthetic grounds but I definitely have listened to those 3 Pixies albums more than those 3 SY albums.

I think SY will win this easily

Pixies >>>>>

Pixies is the classic case of a band that was underrated for so long that people forgot to stop boosting them long after they swung to overrated, and then there was a predictable backlash.

Those first 3 releases are still amazing (even if they're just spreading the best songs from The Purple Tape demo across 3 albums).

Re: Sonic Youth, I didn't truly vibe with them until Murray Street, and yeah, the vocals have always been a hurdle for me.

even if they're just spreading the best songs from The Purple Tape demo across 3 albums

Eh, as late as "1984" Van Halen was still mining their original demos for material.

I had a hip friend in 9th grade (1989) that made me a copy of "Surfer Rosa" from his LP. He put a bunch of other stuff on the cassette, maybe the entirety of "Come On Pilgrim," but either by design or more likely lack of space - or possibly both - left off "Where is My Mind?" So I didn't hear that one until much later, when I replaced my cassette copy with that two-fer CD version. Ironic, given its current ubiquity.

He also made me a cassette of "Daydream Nation" around the same time, and filled up the rest of the tape with, like, Amphetamine Reptile stuff. I think I still have it somewhere, I should investigate!

Evol and Sister might both be in my top 100. I would had added Daydream as the 3rd. Love Bad Moon, but I will put it on when I'm in the mood for their "earlier stuff"

Love Pilgrim and Surfer Rosa, and probably another 20 Pixies songs, but SY is solidly in my DNA

Re: Sonic Youth, I didn't truly vibe with them until Murray Street, and yeah, the vocals have always been a hurdle for me.

― enochroot, Tuesday, October 15, 2024

Even with three distinct singer?

Eh, as late as "1984" 2012 Van Halen was still mining their original demos for material.

XP, i always liked Lee vocals best, but that seems like a boring answer, so i didn't mention that.
Anyway, none of those 3 singers could do what Black Francis does on "Caribou".

who is gonna win?

sy will win

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Looks like every ilxor ever came out to play for this one

i agree with ivy here.

SY mean way more to me than the Pixies overall, but these Pixies albums mean more to me than these SY albums (I may be an unreliable luddite though, because I seem to underrate Sister compared to most SY fans)

I really need to revisit the Pixies’ discography sometime. After hearing so many people praise them like crazy I finally heard it all in like the mid-00s or thereabouts and it was just… okay. “Here Comes Your Man” is good.

xp - that was my exact sentiment when voting. EVOL was massive for me but for whatever reason Sister, Daydream, etc. never did much for me. I know I could pick 3 non sequential SY albums that would immediately top that Pixies run, though.

For me these records are firmly associated with high school in such a way that they are all: (i) about equally important -- I seemed to get more mileage out of BMR than some; (ii) ridiculously well etched into my memory, as juvenile investments in expensive physical discs tended to be; and also (iii) things that I virtually never think to return to in the 21st century!

If I'd seen the thread earlier I may have finally them dragged them out for a painstaking week of reevaluation, etc, and... possibly still declared it a tie lol.

It was a hard one! Sonic Youth is cooler and has a richer career/discography, but those Pixies albums hit me really hard in high school.

nice turn out, closer than expected from looking at posts above.

Whoa what a turnout. Closer result than I thought it would be judging by the posts.