PIXIES Poll: The best track on Doolittle

Tough call between Debaser and Monkey Gone To Heaven.

For me, it is and always has been Gouge Away.

Hard call, but it has to be "Hey"

Gouge Away.

My old band used to do a cover of Here Comes Yer Man so it's gotta be that.

Either "gouge away" or "no. 13 baby" (for the outro which you wish went on forever).

As much as I love the singles, it's "Hey" for me. Parts of the song pop into my head regularly.

"Tame" is everything great about the Pixies (and no more) in two minutes.

"Hey" is teh sexxxiest

YES TAME

Gouge Away.

Gotta be "Debaser."

"Silver" is kind of astonishing, guys.

Teh Debaserator is isth!

"Silver" is probably the only Kim Deal song (in any of her projects) that I kind of actively dislike.

(I'm not voting for it or anything; I just felt obligated to point out that "Silver" is awesome.)

"Silver" is probably the only Kim Deal song (in any of her projects) that I kind of actively dislike.

-- Johnny Fever, Friday, August 3, 2007 6:26 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

i was really worried that was going to end in "actively like" and i was going to have to hate

for me - "Monkey Gone to Heaven" > "Gouge Away" > "No. 13 Baby". tomorrow probably the reverse.

i've been sorta burnt out on the pixies for the last few years but i would happily still listen to no. 13 baby over and over again

Hey!

tame

[listens to album]

...

how the hell can you expect me to choose!

i just recently gave a copy of this to my 13 year old niece. she had never heard of them. i saw her the other day and she said that's about the only CD that her and her friends have been listening to.

That warms my heart, really.

made me happy!
told her to get Surfer

way to be the cool uncle!

Not my favorite of theirs, but I'd go with "Here Comes Your Man."

"No. 13" or "Debaser"

http://i10.tinypic.com/4pajg3r.jpg

"please vote for La La Love You ktxhbye"

Monkey Gone to Heaven. Which was my least favorite when the album came out.

"Crackity Jones" should get at least a mention here.

Impossible to choose, but "Here Comes Your Man" is my sentimental favorite.

Tame.

One night we were going to tattoo the words "number thirteen" above my friend's nipple with india ink and a sewing needle. I kind of wished we had.

That was a tough call. "Monkey Gone to Heaven" got the nod for the way Black Francis/Frank Black rips into the line "then GOD IS SEVEN!!! then GOD IS SEVEN!!!"

YOOOOOOOOO HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!

"There Goes My Gun" is the song that got me into this band, I'm war-bound to vote for it even if other parts of my brain tell me that there are better songs on this album.

kinda weird that my two favorite tracks are the first and the last. i went with debaser.

Veeeeeeeeeeerrrry difficult. The only one I don't like (which everyone else seems to) is Monkey Gone To Heaven. When this first came out I think my favourite was Debaser. I really like Dead and No.13 Baby, but I'm going to go for Hey.

NUMBAH 13

Mr. Grieves is hard to beat.

It is "Hey."

HCYM because it's longer than any of the others i love

Hey, Tame, Debaser: Argh can't decide!!!

surfer rosa poll i would know my answer in a second

And that would be?

River Euphrates.

I prefer the single version of that :P

I'd have to go with No. 13 Baby or Gouge Away, I suppose.

I picked "Hey", though "Gouge Away" could belong on that Great Album Closers thread.

I agree with "Silver" being an awful Kim Deal song. And I used to have a framed picture of her hanging in my office.

My smartass answer to this poll would be "A Good Idea" by Sugar.

Tame is pretty fucking great, too.

"Silver" – 2:25

No way, it feels about 6 min long. Zzzzzzzzz....

You are all fucking nuts.

I like the one that gets quiet ... but then it gets really loud.

No wait, the one that sounds like Nirvana ... that's the one, man!

Silver's ok by itself. I just find it about a metric ton less exciting than any of the Black Francis songs. Or Gigantic. Or anything on Pod. Or Safari. Or Last Splash. Or Pacer. I haven't heard Title t/k.

u should

it's funny, I have never run across it in a store since right after it first came out. suppose I should send for it.

Doolittle's first side is SO much better than the second. Once La La has played, I shut it off.

Have you ever heard "Hey" and "Gouge Away"?

Yeah, I should give Gouge another chance. But Hey, yawn.

I think Silver is great, Dan.

aren't you really into radiohead or something

And?

and Dan hates Metal Box

...OK?

and you both like Silver

uh huh

intersting.

indeed

"Mr. Grieves" because it's like an epic in two minutes.

gouge away or hey

in truth, i find a little over half of these tracks a little underwhelming these days.

Do have anoth-a-pinion?

http://www.imagingallthepeople.co.uk/prints/monkey_gone_to_heaven.jpg

Wow, this is truly one of the hardest decisions I've ever faced, it's like a 10 way tie for me. . .

I'll vote for There Goes My Gun, because of my not being able to get that melody out of my head on that fateful grade 8 field trip to Montreal when I bought Doolittle.

Wow. Looks like you guys are forcing me to vote for I Bleed.

i thought I'd be the only one to vote for Gouge Away, glad to see all the love.

I like Hey too. which sounds like the Stones to me

I Bleed

"Here Comes Your Man" = great pop song
"Hey" = AWESOME
"Debaser" = my pick

For sentimental romantic reasons I'm going to vote for "Hey!", although I've a demo/Peel version of it that is a lot better than the one on the album. Has a little more emotion in it somehow.

It was pretty much a 4 or 5 way tie, so I just voted for "Hey". I'm sure I'll change my mind in an hour. It's not perfect, but I still love this record.

Hey. and then Gauge Away.

monkey, because it's the only one of these songs that resonates with me at all anymore

Yeah its weird, I loved the Pixies completely, but I just don't listen to them anymore, they're of a time that's faded I think.

way-hey-hey-hey-heyve . . .

i never really think about this band, but looking at this poll, i realise ive a lot of time for wave of mutilation, gouge away, here comes your man, not sure which i'd pick

Suprisingly I think "Hey!" is going to win this based on responses thus far. Interesting.

I just remembered a sweet thing. I had just been to JB HiFi (Aus chain CD store) and was outside it waiting for a tram. These 2 teenaged indie boys came out, with a bag of cds. One of them pulled out "Surfer Rosa" and showed it to his mate and said "this is an awesome album I've heard". This made me happy. His friend took the CD, looked at it and went "hmm.. hey awesome, she has her tits out on the cover".

I felt so old. but in a good way.

"I Bleed"

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

In another era, Debaser and especially Monkey Gone To Heaven would both have been top ten UK hits

That reminds me - there's a cover of Where Is My Mind? by Yoav that reminded me what a fantastic song THAT is (definitely the best on Surfer Rosa):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDM5uHT_34M

^^^ Cool technique, but it's far too emo for its own good.

Grrr, I wish I had voted for Debaser instead of Hey

can't believe only one person has mentioned "Wave of Mutilation". I'll probably end up voting for "Debaser", but still, that song is solid!

i went with Debaser, they also played it on indie 103.1 today.

I ended up voting "Dead".

I love Debasser! Especially as the opening song for Haiku Tunnel. I think I'm gonna watch it now....

"Wave of Mutilation" is great but I gotta give it to "Debaser".

i vote for dead.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXMxMGJGkuI

Young, with hair, doing a beavis&butthead naw-naw-nawing intro to "wave of mutilation" - priceless!

"Do you intend paying him back?"
"No, absolutely not! He's my father"

Most of the time I'm like "Oh, solo acoustic performance...*yawn*", but in this case it just shines a light on how excellent those old Pixies songs are. It's like his brain was in a lock groove of pure awesome for about five years.

Hahah that is awesome with the "nawww naww nawww" pretend guitar he's sings :D

when i first heard this, aged ... what, 13? 14? ... i thought "dead" and "monkey gone to heaven" were actually two parts of the same song. can i have them both?

no? all right, then. MGTH it is.

Sometimes, Dead is better.

I meant to say Debaser and especially Here Comes Your Man would both have been top ten UK hits in another era.

Although Monkey was good too.

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

Unexpected but correct.

Interesting!

ilmotm

ish.

I think I'm going to burn the songs to cd in this order and see how it goes.

i think it's the most popular poll in ilm ever.
how many votes? 130 more or less?
anyway,mr.grievs shouldve been higher.

i think it's the most popular poll in ilm ever. how many votes? 130 more or less?

the Rolling Stones one had over 150 votes.

Two people voted for La La Love You? WTF?

i voted for "tame" but "i bleed" deserves more love

Holy crap! "Hey" won. I voted for it to make sure that its greatness was at least acknowledged, but I figured that "Debaser", "Here Comes Your Man", "Gouuge Away", and "Monkey Gone to Heaven" would have beaten it easily.

at least the two worst songs on the record came last.

and the top four is actually about right.

Debaser is not that good!

And Silver! It makes me mad when people complain about the later albums being just bf solo albums and i'm like yeah what bossanova needs is a snoozer like Silver. No thanks.

Bam Thwok is better than at least half of these songs.

"Hey"??
Strange decision, not even in the best ten songs of the album.

Debaser is not that good!

― mizzell, Thursday, August 9, 2007 4:29 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

http://i17.tinypic.com/6ptj2ua.gif

man, looking at that song list reminds me that this is probably one of the ten best albums I own

A little surprised by the margin of victory here seeing as I never got into Hey when I was listening to this album regularly (ie about 12 years ago at least).

took me some distance and time, but it's definitely surpassed apparent fan favorite Surfa Rosa for me.

wow. i saw this thread and logged in so i could vote for "Hey" and whaddya know..

i always loved the beginning it was like some kind of ghost version of the rolling stones

really surprised at this outcome. hey? really?

this should be a yearly poll. gouge away would win for me x99999999

it's all about no. 13 baby

Dan I want to personally thank you for carrying the Kim Deal torch in this thread...anybody who's heard the Pod Demos knows that Sliver was utterly immolated out of spite by Mr. Black Francis...

alright I still really love No. 13 Baby, but I am starting to see how maybe Hey is the best song off this album...

How is this album so perfect.

It's incomprehensible.

i honestly rate it as the worst of their albums. and this is a band i find extremely overrated btw

charlie otm

for me the only album that really works is Bossanova.

But what a collection of songs here!! The 7 also-rans are a litany of awesome.

some dude totally incorrect.

thermo otm

dayo itt

some dude otm

the circle is complete.

some dude and charlie h completely and utterly wrong

curious what these 'no way is doolittle their worst album' ppl think is the actual worst pixies album.

trompe le monde

sb

I couldn't handle Bossanova back when I bought it and I haven't given it a second chance. My Pixies album ranking:

1. Trompe le Monde
2. Surfer Rosa
3. Doolittle
4. Come On Pilgrim
5. Bossanova

pixies 87-89 >>>>>>> bossanova/trompe le monde

am with ship & charlie here, except that I think Trompe might be worse...Doolittle imo is the classic whole-is-less-than-the-sum-of-its-parts album; I like a ton of the songs, and feel overwhelmed when I try to rank them, but there's something about the context--the pacing, or maybe Gil Norton's production--that makes them sound impossibly stiff and pretentious, like some gallery exhibit for Black Francis's abstract song-sculptures.

Whereas, Surfer Rosa's audio-verite production makes that album sound like rock music as a form is undergoing some wrenching transformation as we're listening...

naw u crazy

1. Surfer Rosa
2. Trompe Le Monde
3. Doolittle
4. Bossanova

Come On Pilgrim≥Surfer>Doolittle>Bossanova>Trompe Le Monde

curious what these 'no way is doolittle their worst album' ppl think is the actual worst pixies album.

That's a trap. There is no 'worst' Pixies album.

except for Bossanova

Bossanova is filler-riddled, but totally owns

Bossanova gets my vote as well. But only so far as it's not quite as good as the others, I still love it.

.Doolittle imo is the classic whole-is-less-than-the-sum-of-its-parts album

This is key. All of those songs are so great, but they don't hang together very well. They all feel like they're sort of neatly placed on shelves, whereas Trompe le Monde they all feel like they're in orbit around one another, related to some extent.

That is the exact opposite of how I hear Doolittle, which is basically an ebb-and-flow album to me.

1. Bossanova
2. Trompe Le Monde
3. Doolittle
4. Come on Pilgrim
5. Surfer Rosa

I've pretty much accepted that my opinions on the pixies are totally out of step with everyone else, but would like to know which songs on Bossanova are thought to be filler.

I have to check the Big Orange SPIN Book for Eric Weisbard's suggested running order; he also complained that the sequencing was a problem.

xp I'm with you on the 4 + 5.

Filler:

"Ana"
"Blown Away"
"Hang Wire"

No, maybe, yeah.

^rong as hell (xp)

Ana and Blown Away are two of my favorites on the album...

All Over the World, Hang Wire, Stormy Weather, Is she Weird & Hang Wire are sometimes awesome, sometimes wearying

can maybe see the case for blown away and hang wire, but i love both of them, ana is great

"sometimes-awesome, sometimes-wearying" refers to Hang Wire and Is She Weird...

the first Hang Wire was meant to be Down to the Well, which I actually like a lot but more in its Purple Tape form, with the odd Kim Deal background chant & stuff...

the highlights on trompe le monde are better, but bossanova's consistency is why it's my favoite.

Bossanova version is way fiercer but Deal's weird chik-aa-oom makes the song imo:

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

Bossanova also the album that gave me a real appreciation for surf music

I'm absolutely baffled that "Hey" would be the #1 choice on an album with both "Debaser" and "Tame", let alone the other usual well-known hits. I had to actually listen to the album again to remember how "Hey" even went. Insanity.

Also WTF, I was sure that it was already Proven by Science™ that Bossanova was the worst Pixies album.

I had to double-check to see if I was the lone vote for "Silver", lol

(I wasn't; I voted "Dead")

I know I voted them "Surfer Rosa > Trompe Le Monde > Doolittle > Bossanova", but realistically 'Bossanova' is the only album of theirs I can level any sort of criticism at. The other three are just ranked in terms of which one I'm more likely to choose if I'm going to listen to this band.

The problem I have with 'Bossanova' is mainly down to the song sequencing, the album is quite strong for me until after 'Dig For Fire' and then all of a sudden dips very noticeably, IMO, with only 'The Happening' really standing out. Although, having said that, 'All Over The World' with its extended outro feels more like a penultimate track than a 'track seven'. There's nothing wrong with stuff like 'Down To The Well', 'Blown Away' or 'Hang Wire', but sequencing them together with the low-point (for me) of the album, 'Stormy Weather', just weakens those songs for me. As it stands at the moment, as a front-to-back listen, it's more a 4/5 for me than the 4.5/5 that AMG rates it as.

^ agree with this - kinda feel the same way about Surfer Rosa as well, it dips pretty markedly after Cactus.

Wow, Hang Wire and Stormy Weather are a couple of my favorites from Bossanova.

Trompe le Monde > Surfer Rosa > Doolittle > Bossanova

btw I know it's an EP and therefore doesn't count here but I really love Come On Pilgrim and maybe even more so than any of the actual albums. Maybe.

morelike trompe le merde amirite :D

I can't believe how wrong you are on that, man. You usually have such good taste! ;)

i basically think of come on pilgrim as their debut album. it's officially a "mini LP" not an EP right? whatever that means. Seems a couple songs too long to be an EP anyway.

the whole "doolittle" is their worst album thing is mystifying to me. though I don't know what i'd pick as their worst, I guess.

I remember at the time it came out, Bossanova came across to me like a Pixies album for people who didn't really like the band

Bossanova was orginally conceived as a Black Francis solo album wasn't it? Or am I making that up.

tbh i havent listened to a pixies album as a whole in years theyre def a trax band for me trompe is just the one the fewest tracks i like (xp to enbb)

it's officially a "mini LP" not an EP right? whatever that means

Yeah, I guess. idk what that means either though. Whatever it is, it sure is good.

Lamp - that makes sense. I think that its place as my fave probably owes a lot to the circumstances under which I first heard it and really fond memories of that time in my life.

Caribou is definitely an ace way to begin a recording career amirite!

trompe le monde was my first pixies album, making it a rare instance in which my first is not my favorite.

i don't remember what i voted for four years ago, but i'd vote for 'gouge away' now.

(when did polls start on ilx?)

I remember at the time it came out, Bossanova came across to me like a Pixies album for people who didn't really like the band

― dense macabre (DJP), Wednesday, November 9, 2011 11:40 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

lol this might explain my weird Pixies challops; Bossanova was the first album of theirs I'd heard.

(also lamp otm abt Pixies being a traxx band)(cept for Surfer Rosa)

also Johnny Fever OTM about Caribou

Hmm. I can't get on board with the whole 'Doolittle is the worst album' thing either. For me, 'Surfer Rosa', 'Doolittle' and 'Trompe Le Monde' are equally great. Just that in the general scheme of things 'Doolittle' tends to get more praise than 'Trompe Le Monde' does. I couldn't really say any one of those albums is better than the other, even if I am more likely to listen to 'Surfer Rosa' and 'Trompe Le Monde' over 'Doolittle'.

Trompe is the best-sequenced Pixies album. It hits you with a burst of short, fast tunes out of the gate, changes it up a bit in the middle, and then closes strong. I think it works better as an album-listening experience rather than as an assortment of individual tracks.

the only single I like from Trompe is U-Mass

didn't we have this conversation like 3 weeks ago?

pixies rule, my feelings are best summed up thusly:
caribooooooooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

The title track of 'Trompe Le Monde' is one of my favourite Pixies songs ever. Custom-built for air drumming, that one.

pixies rule, my feelings are best summed up thusly:
caribooooooooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

― the MMMM cult (La Lechera), Wednesday, November 9, 2011 4:51 PM (37 seconds ago) Bookmark

REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-PEEEEEEEEEEENNTTTT!!!!!

actually this is more accurate
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcn0f5s-aas

TAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAME
TAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAME

xp lol LL I was just thinking I had thought Pixies had fallen from grace round these parts so it does my heart good to know that they are still reliable conversation-starters

even tho I don't really like them

This thread has just reminded me that I once worked with a guy called Jefrey.... with one F! First thing I asked him when I found out was "have you heard 'Space (I Believe In)' by Pixies!?!?"

Trompe is the best-sequenced Pixies album. It hits you with a burst of short, fast tunes out of the gate, changes it up a bit in the middle, and then closes strong. I think it works better as an album-listening experience rather than as an assortment of individual tracks.

― o. nate, Wednesday, November 9, 2011 4:49 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

Yeah, I would agree with it being the best-sequenced Pixies album. Definitely.

Slightly OT, but Pixies fans should check out the one-disc version of The Golem - Black Francis is reunited with Eric Drew Feldman (keyboardist on Trompe). Nice batch of songs!

TLM loses its way in the middle but the start and the end are great. bossanova is kind of a muddle the whole way through, never less than good but rarely much more than that either. and i don't like how it sounds. but surfer rosa and doolittle are a level above. if 80s pixies and 90s pixies were 2 different bands, the first one would still be iconic, the second one would be a good band.

Roberto, which songs does 'Trompe Le Monde' lose it and get it back on for you, out of curiosity?

"Space (I Believe In)" sucks a lot of energy out of TLM, imo

That song is funny!

yeah it's funny, but it's self awareness about being filler doesn't make it not filler

I like that one. The weakest point for me is "Subbacultcha".

"Planet of Sound" might be my least favorite Pixies song

i might agree with that.

JEFREY! (JEFREY!) WITH ONE! F! JEF! REY!
JEFREY! (JEFREY!) WITH ONE! F! JEF! REY!
JEFREY! (JEFREY!) WITH ONE! F! JEF! REY!

spaaaaaaaaaaace! i belieeeeeeeeve in spaaaaaaaace!

(and now I'm going to sing the Perry Mason theme!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8LMdPmvYK4&feature=related

i believe in (swinging at) spaaaaace

Planet of Sound is a paint-peeler! I crank it when I'm driving.

Yeah, I don't get the dislike for "Planet of Sound" - maybe not a typical Pixies song, but it moves!

lol I love both Planet Of Sound and Subbacultcha

yeah i'd put subbacultcha up there in my top 10 pixies songs i think.

I liked Subbaculcha more when it had the Distance Equals Rate Times Time part embedded in it

i don't even hate Planet of Sound (can't think of a single Pixies song that I really hate) it's just that it comes between the hugely awesome title track and alec eiffel. prefer the sad punk for a screamer.

Sad Punk is awesome!

i too consider Doolittle to be the worst pixies album and Bossanova the best. I bought D first followed closely by the two earlier records then B as soon as it came out. my pref is probably Bossa>Pilgrim>Surfer with the other two vying for last place.

sigh

i'm listening to Trompe rigth now and i'm pretty sure it's better than Doolittle.

i still love both it's just that the other three are better. actually Trompe is awesome.

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lo64ouJUSh1qa8xyfo1_500.gif

ok full disclosure - i haven't listened to TLM in probably...15 years? i remember the songs vaguely but i have it on cassette and never really felt super compelled to hear it again.

Head On: Mary Chain original vs. Pixies version

in a place they say is dead
in a lake that is not an ocean
i count about a million head
all the tiiiiiiiiiiiime
there's a mo-tion

would have voted for Debaser or Gouge Away. It figures that one of the two songs on this album I always skip won the poll (the other being the overplayed at the time 'Here Comes Your Man')

if I had the rank the albums it would be Doolittle >>> Surfer Rosa > Bossanova > Trompe Le Monde >>> Come On Pilgrim

I can't fathom people rating Trompe Le Monde #1... it seems like such a pieced together and incomplete album, and wasn't received well by anyone I knew at the time.

I'm relistening to all of their stuff on Spotify now, ha. I haven't listened to this stuff in years.

I've loved Trompe since the day it came out - sometimes I feel like it might be my fave Pixies album, but I think that's more down to what other people have noted above...it's their best-sequenced album, and to me that almost makes it feel like their most consistent.

FWIW I'll never understand why people consider "Space (I Believe In)" to be filler. It's odd, sure, but it still seems far too strong to me to be considered filler.

fwiw my hands down fave track on this record is 'wave of mutilation'

whores in my head

I'm absolutely baffled that "Hey" would be the #1 choice on an album with both "Debaser" and "Tame", let alone the other usual well-known hits. I had to actually listen to the album again to remember how "Hey" even went. Insanity.

There are these odd turns on Hey, then how it struggles to a chorus that is suddenly sneaks up at you and also feels aborted. Its quite unlike them, as good as Tame might be they've done a dozen songs that are around that ballpark.

Would have gone for Gouge Away myself, love that wasted riff...

doolittle has always been the most diluted pixies album for me, drawing on some of the potency and energy of surfer rosa, but watering it down with a bit of a bland pop sensibility. i like how bossanova and trompe le monde seem to be doing their own thing altogether, not stuck somewhere in between unhinged and conservative.

albini's dry sound was never suited for a pixies record. i dislike the monolithic drum sound on surfer rosa and think it kinda drown the songs. imo that record could have benefited with a more detailed/less thundering approach to production, i even prefer come on pilgrim's tiny SST-ish sound to the bombast of SR.

Gouge Away and Hey save the second half of this album, which goes downhill badly after Monkey. Then again i think Surfer Rosa goes down even further after Where Is My Mind.

Bossanova's heights aren't as strong as either but is better sequenced, same with Trompe

albini's dry sound was never suited for a pixies record. i dislike the monolithic drum sound on surfer rosa and think it kinda drown the songs.

bullllllllllllllllllllllshhhiitttt

to the first part anyway. your own tastes are your own tastes, fine. but surfer rosa sounds exactly as it should.

i get surfer rosa is one of the quintessential albini jobs. anyway, i've always mantained the gil norton re-recorded versions of gigantic and river euphrates are miles better than the SR ones (they sound even grittier!), so i think a less clumsy approach to production would have suited surfer rosa better.

Yeah, I'm not a big Steve Albini fan or anything, but his style really works for Surfer Rosa.

"A patchwork pinch loaf from a band who at their top dollar best are blandly entertaining college rock. Their willingness to be "guided" by their manager, their record company and their producers is unparalleled. Never have I seen four cows more anxious to be led around by their nose rings."

yeah yeah

No nose rings in sight, Steve-dawg.

http://shiva.blogspot.com/pixies.jpg

Wait, what's kim doing down there?

"How I Met Your Mother" used "Hey" over its closing scenes last night. When I hear the opening notes I was like, "CBS licensed a Pixies song? o_O"

A. "heard" obvs, not "hear"
B. Yes, I actually said the emoticon out loud.

"Hey" is a bad-ass song that I often get stuck in my head.

are pixies songs expensive to license?

well the entire Doolittle album is on Rock Band, so it's hard to say

Rates probably went up after Fight Club

It's not so much the cost, but that The Old People's Network used such a song at all. HIMYM generally uses pretty decent music, though, but still.

If Glee can do "Heads Will Roll", anyone is likely to do anything

It's not so much the cost, but that The Old People's Network used such a song at all. HIMYM generally uses pretty decent music, though, but still.

It's a 22 year-old song. That would be like Full House using...The Beach Boys!

Not quite, but the Pixies are kind of an institution now

Wait, what's kim doing down there?

― rustic italian flatbread, Thursday, November 10, 2011 2:35 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

*zzzzzzip*

Er... I dunno... er... stuff, man.

The worst thing I could say about Doolittle is that I'm tired of hearing 'Debaser' and 'Here Comes Your Man' in rock bars... Also even though I've only ever owned it on CD it really feels like an album of two sides (Side 1 being the pop half) and it's that run of songs towards the end that really makes it for me. I love the production too, I mean there's no way that beautiful coda on 'No. 13 Baby' would've turned out that way with Albini (though I like his work on Surfer Rosa just fine). 'Hey' is an incredible song.

having listened to all of the Pixies albums in chronological order today, Bossanova is certainly missing fangs compared to the others

B-b-b-but..."Rock Music"!

the only songs on the album I noticed were "Velouria", "Allison" and "Dig For Fire"; nothing else made an impression

"Rock Music" is the band's most ott banger...like "Planet of Sound" but more evil and awesome.

dan otm. I'd add "Is She Weird."

"Rock Music" is the band's most ott banger...like "Planet of Sound" but more evil and awesome.

listening to it now, it basically sounds like a slower take on "Wave of Mutilation" with shouting instead of singing; there's nothing special about it at all and stuff like "Tame" and "Dead" blow it out of the water

:(

Waht?!

(Btw "Rock Music" doesn't have the unbelievably annoying fauxhonkytonk guitar riff repeated over every chorus like Planet of Drownd)

I listened to the Bossanova again the other day to try to give it a fair shake and I came to much the same conclusion (again) as Dan - but also made me wonder if the people that really love it are more or LESS familiar with the surf music that inspired stuff like "Cecilia Ann". When it first came out I think the people around me that were most blown away were the ones that didn't really know the Ventures or Duane Eddy much and thought that Pixies were onto something really original. Listening back through Bossanova the other day it struck me that the surf stuff on the album was so much more listless than any of the things that no doubt inspired it....it really seemed like they were just walking through it rather than producing a passionate homage.

Interesting that you hear that as faux honky tonk. It just sounds like rock.

(Btw "Rock Music" doesn't have the unbelievably annoying fauxhonkytonk guitar riff repeated over every chorus like Planet of Drownd)

:::: mouse pointer moves slowly towards sb link :::::

yeah i don't hear a lot of honky tonk in that riff!
and bossanova has a lot more going on than just surf rock...i don't think it always succeeds, but it does strike me as the band's most ambitious record.

planet of sound's riff strikes me as almost prototypical santiago tbh

There is a bit of greasy, bar-room, blues-rock in that riff, not that there's anything wrong with that.

Have fun in your greasy bar-room, folks!

"I don't know bout you, but I like that one song by the Pixies that sounds like it coulda been in a monster truck rally commercial. Yee-haw!!!"

no one's said a word about "Subbacultcha"

Aside from the amount of fuzz, the riff is no more "honky-tonk" than the one in, say, "La La Love You."

Yeah you're right, Phil: I was in fact way off on that description. I'm sorry.

subbacultcha started out pretty good back on the purple tape. then they pulled out the good bit and made D = R x T which is excellent and unfortunately they kept the husk, which is the subbacultcha on TLM.

I have never been too fond of subbacultcha. I'll have to check out the purple tape version and see if I like it any better.

I am intrigued by the idea of a monster truck rally that advertises itself using "Planet of Sound", that sounds awesome

I like both 'Distance Equals Rate Times Time' and 'Subbacultcha'.

yeah, i like them separate. but that's how i first heard 'em.
i think subbacultcha is kind of brilliant lyrically

now we live on the sea and relax and ride the tack
drug running on this panamanian schooner
she walks the deck in a black dress
and me i dress up in black
and we listen to the sea
and look at the sky in a poetic kind of way
what you call it
when you look at the sky in a poetic kind of way
you know when you grope for luna.

and look at the sky in a poetic kind of way
what you call it
when you look at the sky in a poetic kind of way

this is pretty great

yeah, i just think it's a pretty inspired song.

It's the best song about trying to cop off with a fat goth girl in a goth club ever.

proven by the scientific method of not bringing enough CDs on a European road trip, Doolittle is brilliant but in need of a severe trim

reduced to 7 or 8 tracks it would be that magical combination of punchy, flawless and 20 minutes long, which more albums probably need to be

the gold stuff here more or less corresponds with the poll results. my personal tracklist, being hyper-reductive and completely disrespectful towards/otherwise unknowledgeable about Pixies would be debaser/tame/wave of mutilation/i bleed//monkey gone to heaven/hey/gouge away (latter is best track btw) but i am sympathetic towards 'dead' and '#13 baby' as well and would possibly add them in sequence on a weak day. rest is filllerrrrrr (except 'here comes your man' which belongs on a different, worse album)

so yeah. 20-minute albums. discuss.

Eff that. "I Bleed" may be filler, but it's some weird, spooky, awesome filler that shits all over most filler from most bands.

um, read my post again, concentrating on the 'tracklist' bit

Yeah sorry, the first time i read it I made it all the way to 'discuss'.

It's a bit of a quandary with bands whose songs generally end before the 3.00 mark.

It's not a problem if most Pixies albums were 20 minutes, given the brevity involved that's going to be a lot of greatness.

But on the other hand they'll feel the need to fill an album out because so many songs are so short.

TLM to me is maybe their most consistent without having as many peaks as Doolittle.

I have never listened to this album and thought "I wish there could be less of this."

Yeah a Doolittle without Crackity Jones is no Doolittle.

Silver is the only song I'd happily lose from this album but the rest is golden.

evan otm

one of the greatest rock albums of all-time. i think it's strength is that there is no stand-out song. there are very few albums this consistent around. the singing on silver is pretty awful but the bottleneck guitar playing plus the guitar fuzz at the end is really nice.

"i bleed" filler? are you crazy? how that song starts slowly and explodes in total self-abandonment is pure genius. it's one of the many highlights.

i bleed made the goddamn cut, man

ok, sorry, i read the wrong post. but in any case the idea of reducing doolittle is weird, it is already a very concentrated album. the longest song no. 13 baby - one of the highlights - is not even reaching the 4 minute mark. doolittle without the gorgeous drunken stagger of "there goes my gun" is like the lord of the rings without frodo.

Nah imago is right. but No 13 Baby is super classic and it's a little disconcerting that you'd relegate it to 'alternate' status

doolittle has just 38.6 minutes, and not one minute is wasted. a 20 minute version would be not more than a torso.

I disagree and feel like the second side is kind of aimless-verging-on-pointless

But I'm a staunch Surfer Rosa partisan, so

"Silver" gets such a bad rep in this thread. I've always loved it. A little bit of solemn sorrow before "Gouge Away" rips everything to shreds.

Kind of a blues song, really.

I know this is sacrilege but if I had to delete one song from this it would be the much-loved "Gouge Away." "I Bleed," on the other hand, is one of the high points of the whole Pixies catalog, probably the very very best playoff of BF's voice against KD's voice there ever was.

Why Gouge Away?

Because something about it reads to me as "the generic Pixies song, about which all I can say is that it sounds good and sounds like the Pixies." It's like the mean of all their other songs.

Generic Pixies song to me would be something like Allison.

Dead

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGNhW-iSY_g

^ only one i would ever skip but yeah c'mon, under 40 minutes is pretty tight.

Also Frank going all crazy dog noises on Crackity Jones is A+++++

Gouge Away may be the "mean" of all their songs but it is also my favourite of all their songs.

I just got an email with a link to four more new songs - I'm not sure I'm going to even listen to them.

If someone told me the four new songs were the Pixies I would have had my doubts. It sounds a lot like, dunno, Weezer maybe? A couple are Pixies-ish, I guess, one called "Indie Cindy" and one called "What Goes Boom." "Another Toe" is a nice little song. Black Francis barely sounds like Black Francis though.

Generic mean of the Pixies = Into tge White

Gouge Away is cool bcz they flip the switch: instead of shaving off one from the regular four-measure phrasing for added angularity/tension, they add one to make it five measures and then try to cope withwith the resultant diffuseness.

Plus I am always a little taken with how, after an album's worth of elliptical and esoteric lyrics, how he deploys the Samson and Delilah story in sych a straightforward manner. Its not my favorite song by any means, but the whole Hey/Silver/GA sequence is not what I mean when I gripe about this album

Sorry bout typos

Pixies: Doolittle 25 Tracklist:

Disc One – Doolittle
01. Debaser
02. Tame
03. Wave of Mutilation
04. I Bleed
05. Here Comes Your Man
06. Dead
07. Monkey Gone to Heaven
08. Mr. Grieves
09. Crackity Jones
10. La La Love You
11. No. 13 Baby
12. There Goes My Gun
13. Hey
14. Silver
15. Gouge Away

Disc Two – Doolittle: Peel Sessions & B-Sides
01. Dead (Peel Session
02. Tame *
03. There Goes My Gun (Peel Session)
04. Manta Ray (Peel Session)
05. Into The White *
06. Wave of Mutilation (Peel Session)
07. Down To The Well (Peel Session)
08. Manta Ray
09. Weird At My School
10. Dancing The Manta Ray
11. Wave of Mutilation (UK Surf)
12. Into The White
13. Bailey’s Walk

Disc Three – Doolittle: Demos
01. Debaser
02. Tame *
03. Wave of Mutilation (First Demo) *
04. I Bleed *
05. Here Comes Your Man (1986 Demo)
06. Dead *
07. Monkey Gone To Heaven *
08. Mr. Grieves *
09. Crackity Jones *
10. La La Love You *
11. No. 13 Baby – VIVA LA LOMA RICA (First Demo) *
12. There Goes My Gun *
13. Hey (First Demo) *
14. Silver *
15. Gouge Away *
16. My Manta Ray Is All Right *
17. Santo *
18. Weird At My School (First Demo) *
19. Wave Of Mutilation *
20. No. 13 Baby
21. Debaser (First Demo) *
22. Gouge Away (First Demo) *

* = Previously unreleased

think i've heard all of that previously unreleased stuff on bootleg. the doolittle demos weren't terribly interesting iirc.

I hear they've been curating this for 25 years.

"Silver" is probably the only Kim Deal song (in any of her projects) that I kind of actively dislike.

'Gouge Away' is my favourite track on this these days. My third favourite album of theirs after Trompe le Monde and Surfer Rosa.

Silver was on the Pod Demos so it's very surprising to me that Charles wrote it

I know that they both received co-writing credit for it but I never heard any breakdown wrt the division of labor, and two-chord country dirges happen to be one of Kim's many specialties (hello Mad Lucas), so given also that it was orig slated for a non-Charles side project, I assumed that the song was mostly Kim's and Charles got royalties for the guitar noise at the end or something

This album is a bit of a mess. Way too much throwaway (most of the songs with single-figure votes) to be a classic. The great stuff is still great IMO

^

(Aside from I Bleed)

I couldn't disagree more with the both of you if I were wearing David Lovering's boxer shorts. It is one album I wouldn't take a single song off of; even the weaker moments, of which there are very few, contribute to the structure of the whole.

The "Hey whadayoo know..." bit of "Dead" is truly one of the greatest of things.

Yeah I love pretty much all the whole thing. The only one I don't really have time for is Crackity Jones - I've never liked their frantic cowpunk-ish type songs (see also: I'm Amazed)

They don't believe in Mr. Grieves, but I have another pinion.

Yeah, Crackity Jones is probably the closest thing to filler on it, but, complementary to what I said above, it works well as a bridge between the two songs surrounding it.

I’m just an idiot, best to disregard my pronouncements

Lol youre alright, Im w you totally on Kim being one of the best songwriters!

This was the absolute peak, right here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0bxPbWicgc

Been playing Doolittle a lot on the road lately, because by chance the cd happened to be within arms reach in the car. Renewing my love for this damn album once again, the worn-off vinyl stashed away somewhere. Read up on the wiki for crying out loud, especially about the lyrics: so many biblical references that pass me by. And I was force-fed the bible till age 6. It was weird to read about Frank Black crossed with the bible and the many biblical references. Pixies is the one band where I feel the music up to a tee without knowing what the lyrics are actually about. I enjoy them partly because their lyrics mean nothing to me. And I intend to keep it that way.

(fp'd all of you suckers who said this album needs "trimming". Fuck that shit. No filler all killer.)

Also 'Wave of Mutilation' was robbed, obv, because it is the best song in the universe. But I can live with the results, regardless.

Good album, but it's no Surfer Rosa.

I beg you, honestly, what makes 'Surfer Rosa' a better album than 'Doolittle'?

tame is def my favourite on here, one of the best screamers the pixies ever did

They both need trimming IMO

Well, Steve Albini for one.

xp

Come on man, humour me. "Albini, for one" is a p weak take explaining why you prefer Surfer Rosa over Doolittle. Albini is good, and he touched upon the ceiling of magic at times, but with the Pixies he did not.

I find Doolittle overly slick and its more overt poppiness does not cater to my lingering wannabe edginess. I love In Utero far more than Nevermind for the exact same reasons. I also think Surfer Rosa has the better songs, except maybe for Hey. That is all.

No album under 40 minutes needs trimming, tbh. I don't know if it was this album or "Trompe Le Monde" where Frank Black cited Buddy Holly to justify song lengths. Certainly "Trompe" has some impressively short songs, but Doolittle songs are pretty short on average as well. Bossanova has often been my fave, and coincidence or not has the longest songs, I think.

Fair. I disagree (re: "better songs". Pixies never bettered songs like Debaser, Tame, Hey, Monkey, Mutilation etc) but at least I know what you mean now.

I too love In Utero way more than Nevermind.

xp

xp It was 'Doolittle' where Frank Black justified the song length mentioning Buddy Holly :)

dunno think motorway to roswell is as good as anything on Doolittle

Also 'Wave of Mutilation' was robbed, obv, because it is the best song in the universe.

(And Nevermind is SO much better than In Utero it's not in the same universe.)

I was a Bossanova stan for a number of years—partly because I truly thought it was better, but also to be contrarian—however, at some point within the last 10 years, I've looked deep within myself and made peace with the fact that Doolittle is their most well known and best selling album for a reason: it's perfect.

A lot of people consider Surfer Rosa superior to Doolittle which mystifies me, I think it's probably a function of SR (or that era) being your first exposure to Pixies

I kiss you JF, if you allow me to do that with full consent, because you are otm.

I heard Doolittle first fwiw (in the late 90s). When I later discovered Surfer Rosa, the extra noisiness and amateurishness struck me as a more optimal take on their overall aesthetic. And despite its overexposure, I still stand by 'Where Is My Mind?'.

I think Albini's "recording" has aged far better than Norton's "production," but for an album in 1989, Doolittle still sounded pretty rock n roll.

Incidentally, I do love Doolittle as well, I just feel like it tends to sanitise the bedlam a little too much in spots. I mostly blame the production, once again (I am a bit of an Albini junkie, though).

xp

Scott Ian like Norton's production on the Pixies albums so much, he hired him to produce an Anthrax album.

No need for any Pixies album to be 40 mins; their tradition of 2 min songs/repetition/fast/loud - 30-35 minutes is enough and would improve basically any album they did

That... says it all, really? (Sorry.)

xp

88-93 was a weird time, dude.

Never mind. Apparently my brain completely fabricated that factoid. I thought he produced Sound of White Noise, but that was Dave Jerden. Not Gil Norton.

<offtopic> Look at those votes! ILX was a busy place eleven years ago.

Jerden kind of sounds like Gil Norton.

There was a concert video posted on another Pixies thread recently which must have been recorded around the time of Doolittle and I was surprised how close it sounded to the album, so I don’t think it was Norton changing their sound so much as they were changing it themselves.

Gil Norton elevated the Pixies from pretty great to really great (exhibit A: the Purple Tape) but the bassline on Gouge Away alone, or the screaming of F. Black on Debaser, or the second verse-to-chorus movement of 'Wave of Mutilation' show the band's uniqueness. No producer could have elevated that, nor destroyed it.

xp That's interesting, I'd like to see that.

You guys have seen the 30th anniversary SR/Pilgrim reissue splurge I take it?

http://pixies.4ad.com/

Concert video is here:

Pixies: Classic or Dud

No producer could have elevated that, nor destroyed it.

"Which producers could have destroyed 1987-1989 Pixies and how?" is kind of an interesting question actually.

I heard Doolittle first fwiw (in the late 90s). When I later discovered Surfer Rosa, the extra noisiness and amateurishness struck me as a more optimal take on their overall aesthetic. And despite its overexposure, I still stand by 'Where Is My Mind?'.

― pomenitul, Monday, October 15, 2018 10:18 PM (twenty-nine minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Not having a go, but 'Where is my mind?' to me always sounded like it should/could have been a Doolittle song. Should rather than could.

ty O. Nate!

"Which producers could have destroyed 1987-1989 Pixies and how?"

Shep Pettibone

Yeah, I'm trying to imagine a Stock, Aitken & Waterman take on "Wave of Mutilation" now and it isn't pretty.

I could also imagine Phil Spector forcing them at gunpoint to go loud-loud rather than quiet-loud.

Trying to imagine a Trevor Horn led Pixies in the vein of Welcome to the Pleasuredome FGTH.

Oh God! Jeff Lynne.

There's that aborted early REM session with Stephen Hague that shows what happens when you pair an indie rock band with the wrong producer.

Yeah, I'm trying to imagine a Stock, Aitken & Waterman take on "Wave of Mutilation" now and it isn't pretty.

― dorsalstop,

uh it would be awesome and sound like Stephen Hague's work on Pere Ubu's contemporaneous Cloudland.

xp I'd never listened to that Stephen Hague version of "Catapult" before, but... I kinda think it's ok?

just ok.

Bit lifeless.

Good album, but it's no Trompe le Monde

Hague/REM sounds just like The Cars.

Good album, but it's no Trompe le Monde

― kraudive, Monday, October 15, 2018 10:03 PM (fourteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

OTM. While I disagree that Surfer Rosa is a better collection of songs than Doolittle (as someone mentioned above), Trompe le Monde crushes both IMO. They should have never recorded another note of music as the Pixies after that, as it was a perfect album to go out on. Bossanova is the worst of their original run, but two thirds of it was still up to their then usual high standard.

Thirded.

Yeah the Hague "Catapult" is in no way good, too much chorus, too many ridiculously dinky keyboard figures. I mean, it's an unimpeachable song, I'm sure I would still have liked it if it had come out this way!

Good album, but it's no Trompe le Monde
― kraudive, Monday, October 15, 2018 10:03 PM (fourteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

absolutely, what a perfect run at the end of the record too!

I think it's perfect front to back. I still play TLM lots and I've barely played the others since the initial reunion gigs probably. So much heart and soul.

And I think it's amazing how TLM's reputation has totally changed recently.

I can only guess Albini's dismissive remark about them being a boring bar band was fueled by some personal animus because that is just wrong

Yeah, he's totally walked that comment back (like 15 years ago iirc). He and his wife are very tight with Kim now, plus he engineered the recent Breeders record.

He *loves* Kim.

I have no problem believing that Steve loves Kim and dgaf about the Pixies

who doesn't?

30 years old

wow! i still remember my brother getting mad at me for stealing his cassette and taking it with me to summer camp that year.

you were right to do it

Am I the only one who thinks "Hey" kinda sucks?

TBF, this may just be a side-effect of my decreasing amount of patience for listening to Frank Black do his thing.

Yes, I think you are

Also, 30 years later "Silver" is still great

idk how i feel about it now, but it sounded pretty great when i was 13/14 -- my favorite doolittle memory is a mental montage of all of my different friends who liked this album all enjoying their different favorite songs. i am delighted when i think about all of us being little kids jamming out to doolittle.

it's great and I still love Mara Carlyle's "Hey"/"1 Thing" mashup thing also

apparently doolittle was just certified platinum in december

I wouldn't say that "Hey" sucks but it would not have occurred to me that many people would pick it as the best song on this album (or even top 3 tbh).

^ I've barely heard the album in two decades, but that does seem surprising. The ranking is otherwise pretty much exactly what I'd have guessed from radio and other chatter at the time.

I now see that "Hey" is extremely popular on Spotify too. Was it in a film or something?

Omg 15M more plays than "Debaser", 22M more plays than "Monkey Gone to Heaven". Wtf?

So apparently there was a viral Youtube video with it in 2005? (According to the blurb in the RS Readers' Poll, where it was, ulp, #1).

Aaaah!

Looks like another one of these then:

songs that weren't a bands biggest hit, but have gone on to be their legacy song and biggest iTunes seller

Revisiting the album, I do see why people like it. It's not as immediate but has a more interesting structure than the more straightforward verse/chorus songs, with a lot of dynamics.

(Video helped.)

It's been a fan deep fave for as long as I can remember

It's definitely a song I remember latching onto almost immediately

Saw them in Boston on the Doolittle tour when I was a freshman in high school. It was loud as shit. Yes, I'll be bragging about this until my dying day.

I still think it's their best album and "Hey" is a dope track.

cute girl i was really into back in the day told me she thought "Hey" was sexy! there was no going back after that

There's a kind of anguished lovelorn quality to it that hits on an emotional level that's sometimes missing from their other songs, where his typical yelpy weirdness creates more distance.

xpost, saw them on that tour as well, this show:
TAAAAAME
and yes, I still occasionally brag about it, too ;)

I'm kind of impressed at how enthusiastic the crowd is in that video, considering that it's an overseas festival. I pretty much thought of them as a "local" band at the time, and they were still at the club level in their hometown.

They were very popular quite early in the Netherlands - Surfer Rosa was in the top 10 of the major music mag in 1988

HEY was also #1 on a RS reader’s poll from 2013.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/readers-poll-the-10-best-pixies-songs-10588/1-hey-227479/

I'd probably vote for 'Hey'.

Moodles is right. It taps into some sort of soul and vulnerability that is constantly hiding in their other songs. I can hear why some people find it sexy, it’s about lust and shame, self-destruction through sex addiction. Kind of mirrors the angst of being a horny teenager but contrasts it with adult world consequences like divorce and being a father/mother.

Also the song itself captures the band at the top of their game, the performance feels very effortless. the album version is even a live take iirc.

'Hey' is incredible. There's about 2 or 3 songs on this that I'm less keen on that the others, but 'Hey' isn't one of 'em.

Still prefer Trompe le Monde overall.

The 2013 RS poll was the one I linked.

(and the writer of that one did attribute the recent popularity of "Hey" to the viral video)

Are you all talking about this video? The one of two girls in their bedroom? This one with... *checks notes*....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_CSo1gOd48

... 34.4 million views?

setlist.fm suggests the band were fond of performing it too. Seems to be the earliest Doolittle song they played and they did so pretty consistently from about the time Surfer Rosa was released.

I'm not surprised because I think it unworthy. I've just virtually never heard anyone mention or play it. I certainly didn't hear it on radio or see it appear in listener polls locally at the time. (In contrast to the likes of "Debaser", "HCYM", "Monkey", "WoM", "#13 Baby" and "Gouge Away".) I'm likely just stuck with a parochial view by failing to give the band much thought since the pre-internet era, despite this possibly being my most played record as a 15-year-old.

didn't realize it was bigger than WoM or debaser (once used diagetically on the o.c. to denote a Cool But Juvenile Man) and was unaware of the youtube vid, but "hey" was def a cd-r staple and frequent jam attempt amongst pixies kids (who were mostly girls actually) at my high school c.2003.

I never knew about the "Hey" viral video, but in the notes below it turns out Pixies invited them to actually star in the official video for "Ring The Bell" in 2014. I don't like any of the nu-Pixies stuff, but it's cool of them to do that.

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

They directed the video too!

Nice!

I asked my wife (a big Pixies fan) — she voted “Gouge Away.”

your wife has good taste (comedy timing pause) in music

Thank you! You all are great. Stay all day if you want to.

I like "Gouge Away" a lot. I would probably pick "No. 13 Baby" myself, with "Monkey" and "Debaser" close.

Gouge Away and No. 13 Baby are my favourites but honestly this album blew my mind when I was 14 and I pretty much love all of it. Apart from There Goes My Gun and La La Love You. I don't hate those just not v good. I can still remember walking around Worcester city centre listening to this on my walkman for the first time, RIP Midlands Educational

Haha No. 13 Baby is my favorite, with I Bleed & Here Comes Your Man taking silver & bronze

At "indie discos" in the uk in the late 90s/early 00s, if you requested something off doolittle nine times out of ten they played debaser. So that's what I was dancing to at midnight on my 30th birthday.

I think this might be more because I’m a Breeders fan but the idea that “Silver” is worse than those with 5 votes or fewer floors me. That darker back half album stretch from “No. 13 Baby” to “Gouge Away” desperately needs that eerie Deal track!

"Silver" is fantastic. I always catch myself singing it in the style of a modern country crossover song.

tbf "Dead" rules but so does "Silver"

I think the weak link on the album is "La La Love You" but I also like that song so 🤷‍♂️

lol @ going back through the thread after posting and seeing that I voted for "Dead", who's vmic now

yeah I think the only songs I'm not that keen on are La La Love You and There Goes My Gun. and Here Comes Your Man to an extent tbh

Deal and Black Francis share writing credits on "Silver" and "Gigantic," so I've always wondered who did what. Re: "Gigantic" specifically, there's a quote from Francis on the wiki:

"A good chord progression, very Lou Reed influenced. I'd had the word 'gigantic' in my mind just because the chord progression seemed very big to me."

Aware that Kim Deal was seeking more creative input, Frank Black set her a challenge using a circular chord sequence he'd developed. "We started doing a bit of their loud quiet loud dynamic, where we would bring things down to bass and drums, the kind of thing you'd hear on a Sisters of Mercy song," he recalled to Uncut. "I wanted to do a song that didn't change chords, like Lou Reed's Sweet Jane. So I just said to Kim, let's do a song called 'Gigantic,' this is the bass riff, quiet in the verses loud in the choruses."

Hey, Silver and Gouge Away is a trio for the ages

from RapGenius.net:

Black Francis told Esquire that “Silver” is,

the only composition that I did with Kim on this session. I think we worked on it a couple of times the previous year or something. I don’t know what it means to her and I don’t know what it means to me. The lyrics are all very vague and vaguely folk-sounding. You can almost hear it’s like a faux-folk song. It’s definitely an abstraction. At least that’s my interpretation of it. It was all about creating a mood I think.

This is a song me and Kim wrote really fast one night sitting around bored in the studio waiting for whatever to happen with the engineers. There were other lyrics that were supposed to have been written for the actual song but all we’d got left were the original phrases that we came up with so that was that.

(Black Francis in the NME, April 1989)

So it's a full music and lyrics collaboration?

That's surprising because "Silver" was also on the Pod Demos. I had always assumed (for some odd reason) that Charles's input regarded elements that were specific to the Doolittle version

Kim wrote the lyrics to Gigantic and it was based on the play/movie, Crimes of the Heart. My memory is fuzzy on this, but a married white woman in the south has an affair with a young black man and in the song the narrator sees them meet up.

Fuck it, let me look it up:

Kim Deal’s ex-husband John Murphy sheds some light on this song’s origin in the 2004 oral history Fool the World:

"Charles came up with the riff, but he wasn’t really sure what the lyrics were going to be, so he goes, “Eh, well, Kim, why don’t you take a shot at it? The only thing I know is that I want to call it ‘Gigantic’,” and she says, “Fine.” So she comes home with it and she’s playing it on the guitar and I said, “Gigantic, okay, maybe it’s about a big mall.” She goes, “Okay, let’s try that for a while,” and I’m like, “The mall, the mall, let’s have a ball.” So I wrote that. It changed to “Hey, Paul”, because it had to rhyme. And then, a couple of days later she had fixated on this Sissy Spacek movie Crimes of the Heart about this farmworker, I think he’s a black guy, and Sissy Spacek and this farmworker get together – so that’s what it’s about. An illicit love affair."

So there are some things to unpack here. His "teeth are white as snow." I assume in contrast to his skin color. And the word "gigantic" in the context of the song?

I tried reading the "Doolittle" 33 1/3 and ... couldn't. Boring subjects, writer not quite up to making something interesting out of them. Which is part of the band's appeal, in a weird way.

So there are some things to unpack here. His "teeth are white as snow." I assume in contrast to his skin color. And the word "gigantic" in the context of the song?

Yeah, after I learned the setting for the song, I no longer loved it in the way I once did (which I really did, because there are almost no songs that include the name Paul).

Palace Brothers - O Paul

Gigantic is cancelled

xxp Big Thief - Paul

a big big pud

uriah hit the crapper
the crapper