Worst Pixies song

UMass. Because the lyrics are embarrassingly awful. No contest.

I can't believe I just started a thread on ILM. I feel so exposed.

just among the tracks on the albums, i guess the TLM version of subbacultcha is an obvious weak point. all over the world is not great either, it kind of slowly brings bossanova to a turgid halt midstream. pixies had no business recording a 5 and a half minute song. but, even so, both of those songs have their good points.

I will generally stan hard for Kim Deal, especially in the context of the Pixies where her turns in the spotlight are limited, but Silver is pretty terrible.

Bum Whack. Or whatever that post reunion thing was called.

Dig For Fire. Dig for Fire/Desire

How 'bout a contender from each full album:

Cactus (SRosa)
La La Love You (Doo)
Down To The Well (Boss)
Subbacultcha (TLM)

Winner (aka loser): Subbacultcha

La La Love You is a good time!

I don't hate it, but I mean it's not like picking a worst track from Doolittle is easy.

no way Cactus is sick

Silver by far. Drives me around the bend. And the harmony is just a little bit out of sync, bugs the hell out of me every time I hear it.

Cactus and Silver are both amazing.

Silver is incredible, do not understand why so many people hate it. Weirdos.

All of the aforementioned are great (possibly not Bam Thwok). Try something like Story Weather or one of the b-sides instead.

Stormy

I can't remember anything I heard off of Bossanova, but this is Gigantic for me. "Hey Paul, hey paul, hey paul, let's have a ball." Really? Which one did you have to find the rhyme for?

Also, for use of the phrase "what a gas".

This thread is nuts PaulTMA OTM

U-Mass is one of their best

Silver is great; I think I answered this earlier as Planet of Sound, but this is probably like Bailey's Walk or Velvety Instrumental or something...

U-Mass is one of their best

― Number None, Sunday, January 15, 2012 2:12 PM (44 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

also cactus is great.

Cactus and Silver are both amazing.

OTM. It's got to be 'Bailey's Walk', a terrible song even by the standards of their other throwaway b-sides. For album tracks, I'd go with 'All Over the World' or 'Stormy Weather'.

I vote for one of the several unremarkable tracks off Bossonova like maybe "Is She Weird".

I don't think that the obvious knock-offs like "Bailey's Walk" qualify since they are specifically written as b-sides and that gives them some charm.

Though I agree that Bossanova is by some measure their worst record (and Dig for Fire is particularly painful), I am casting my voice for "Motorway to Roswell."

Favorite overheard concert conversation, ever:

Dude 1: Have you heard that new Pixies song yet? Bam Thwok?

Dude 2: No, is it any good?

Dude 1: It's pretty bad. I mean, I haven't heard it yet, but I've heard it's pretty bad.

Pretty sure I love every track on every album. But the answer is "Space (I Believe In)."

Motorway to Roswell is one of my favorite Pixies songs. Definitely in the top 10. What don't you like about it, broom air?

I actually just woke up with the lyrics in my head and that got me wondering, what is a "hammer lane?"

xp - Wow, "Space (I Believe In)" is also a favorite. Top 5. What don't you like about that one?

NOTE: I'm asking you guys out of genuine curiosity, not to be argumentative! I'm curious because your dislike might give me a new perspective.

"Space" was literally written as filler. It's about the guy they brought in to play tablas on the filler track. I mean:

We needed something to move and fill up the space
we needed something this always is just the case
jefrey with one f jeffery took up his place
sat on a carpet and with tablas in hand took up the chase
jefrey with one f jefrey

The hammer lane is, I presume, the left lane, where you can drive faster.

Huh! I had no idea and that knowledge makes it more interesting to me! I'm surprised to learn that it is filler.

It's not necessarily one my favorites lyrics-wise, but b/c of the music. I especially like the loud beginning, Kim's "spacious" back-ups, and the noisy ending.

The hammer lane is another term for the passing lane. Its etymology originated with truckers in North America and compares a foot pressing hard on an accelerator pedal with the slamming action of a hammer.

You're right. Context suggested that, but I had never heard the term before, so I wondered.

Did you know that "Double Nickels on the Dime" is a reference to driving 55 on Interstate 10?

Personally I hate "Alec Eiffel" but the least essential, most worthless thing they ever did was the "Head On" cover.

DJP is no longer allowed to post on ILM

I'm with DJP on that cover. Adds nothing to the already slight original. "Space (I Believe In)" would be my pick for worst original tune.

Oh wow I thought the ILX throngs revered AE; I think itds better than Planet but not by much

DJP is no longer allowed to post on ILM

God, "Bam Thwok" is such garbage

That's what I heard.

UMass rules. Love it when the bass goes crazy at about one minute mark.

IT'S ED-U-CAY-SHUN-AL!!!!!!

I guess if I had to choose a least favorite, I'd go with La La Love You because
-- "pretty baby, don't mean maybe" (cmon, really?)
-- and the dippy woo-woo whistle
-- and also because it was, in my experience, laaaaazy mixtape fodder (I know we've gone over this before)

I like my Pixies desperate, sweaty, menacing, and weird OR big fun. La La Love You is none of those things.

disqualifying Bam Thwok & b-sides b/c low-hanging fruit

mega-challops answer: This Monkey's Gone to Heaven (sooooooooo overrated)

actual answer: Tony's Theme

How could you hate a song about a superhero named Tony?

Love Kim on 'Tony's Theme'

card in my spokes

i like kim on Tony's theme, actually. can't say the same for the rest of the band.

i will say that, for me, the worst negative reaction any Pixies song might inspire is "hmmm, maybe I'll skip this one today," as opposed to "jeez, what a fundamentally godawful song."

of the four albums and come on pilgrim, it's gotta be something on trompe le monde. "U-mass" maybe.

"tony's theme" is great!

The "Dig for Fire" hate here is inSANE!
Least essential might be "The Thing," since it's just part of/a remix of "The Happening."

Haven't heard any Pixies albums past Doolittle, so I guess La La Love You gets my vote. It is actually an awesome song for the first thirty seconds though, they should have just stopped the tape there.

Okay, awesome is perhaps too strong a word.

Bossanova was a slight disappointment at the time, but as a result of spending less time with it in the 90s than I did the previous albums, it now sounds relatively fresh to me. Lots of great songs: "Velouria", "Is She Weird", "Dig for Fire", "Down to the Well", "The Happening", "Havalina", etc. Still haven't warmed to Trompe le Monde.

I think Bossanova was the first album where they had to come up with mostly new material on the spot. Before then they were basically cherry picking the best stuff that had been written pre-Come on Pilgrim. So no archive to pull from + band members not getting along = sort of uninspired record (for the Pixies). People who consider this album their finest work must dig this band for completely different reasons than I do.

"where is my mind" because of fight club

itt ppl reveal that they don't actually like the Pixies

I love Bossanova. In some ways it's the album where the band's surreal qualities and absurdity really come to the fore, with Black Francis backing away from some of his sexual horror stuff and going in that sci-fi direction. I love the strange mix of production polish and guitar skronk. It's oddly smooth in its assault.

Also, opening the album with an obscure surf cover, and an instrumental at that, was inspired. Following it with something as gonzo as "Rock Music" even more so.

Bossanova is my first Pixies album and absolutely one of my favorites.

This to me is really hard; I thought for sure that all Pixies albums were stuffed to the gills with filler but even the most lackluster track will show surprising reserves of charm when singled out for ignominy.

La La Love You = absurdist valentine
Tony's Theme = nails the B-52's influence so you don't have to
Stormy Weather = apocalyptic stomper; yeah it's slight, but unlike, say, "Finest Worksong" it actually sounds as huge as it's supposed to
Silver = despite Black Francis's best attempts to ruin it, still an awesome slab of doomy country and v possibly the dry run for "Mad Lucas"
There Goes My Gun = BBC version is incredible
All Over the World = extended space rock outro with echoey CB vocals absolutely nails a sort of nocturnal altered mental state, like someone who hasnt slept in a couple of days and is driving all night; it's a total drone & is v evocative of subconscious creeping into wakeful thoughts
Santo = an almost perfect distillation of B Francis's prog-as-twisted-scrap-metal songwriting approach
Down to the Well = hard to hear on the album version but demos have that great unhinged chant that Kim sings through the background p much the whole way through. Makes the song imo.
Hang Wire = another total stomper on an album that maybe wasn't the best showcase for those
Cactus = suffers more from album placement than anything imo; SR gained built tension and drama up to Where Is My Mind? which gently relieves it via big pop number. Any song coming afterwards is bound to seem lackluster. still, perverted Johnny Cash homage over top of glam stomper arrangements with P!I!X!I!E!S! chant over the bridge (listen closely)
I'm Amazed = another song saved by its demo version, which had a great yodeling section excised by Albini for being "too p*ssy"
Dancing the Manta Ray = mesmerizing.

(sorry for no TLM songs; I only like two of them, and can't remember how the rest of them go)

Black Francis backing away from some of his sexual horror stuff and going in that sci-fi direction. I love the strange mix of production polish and guitar skronk. It's oddly smooth in its assault.

see I think Trompe Le Monde beats Bossanova as far as sci-fi/studio polish/guitar stuff goes.

U-Mass I don't love but I recall Pitchfork choosing it as their definite Pixies choice for the Pitchfork 500 book.

surprised that "cactus" has come up so often. one of my favorite pixies songs from way back. such great lyrics. "bloody your hands on the cactus tree, wipe it on your dress and send it to me" <3<3<3

not to mention "and a letter in your writing doesn't mean you're not dead"

except i did

yeah but i mean to the less than obsessive those lines are like the only interesting part of the song*

(*that probably sounds condescending but this is also true for myself up until maybe two or three years ago...)

Je55e:

Don't let me ruin your pleasure, but I find its anthemic/earworm aspect cloying and the lyric is slight. Feels like midtempo old guys music to me that they could have written in an hour. I agree that the opening is cool though.

Trompe Le Monde is a difficult record. There's some amazingly great stuff on it: Planet of Sound is in their top five to me. Note the ABBA rhyme scheme in the first two verses. No one does that! And I love the Mary Chain cover. Also Letter to Memphis. But also a lot of half-written stuff posing as mature song writing.

I never got into the rave-up "Head On". Love the original so much more.

AH this is easier than I thought. "Pilgrim"'s version of "Vamos". The song is better recorded/performed the second time round, fits better in Surfer's sequence

They're both pretty good, and I love almost all JAMC, even with the shitty drum machine (which I actually love). But Darklands / Automatic both tend to draw out their songs longer than they otter do, and Pixies' edit of Head On makes it the original's equal, says me.

I heard a lot of demos/peel sessions before they ended up on albums, so like, the album versions of "down to the well" and especially "Hey" really annoyed me when I heard them, so polished. :(

I really dislike the "UK surf mix" slowed-down version of "Wave of Mutilation", as well.

Je55e:

Don't let me ruin your pleasure

Oh no, not at all. I sometimes really like to hear opposing opinions about things I like, if they're fair and thoughtful, which yours really are. (like I almost never meet people who really *hate* Chicago (the city), so when I do, I'm interested to hear why; also, I have yet to meet anyone who hates potatoes, but I hope I do so I can ask them about their disgust)

Thanks for your your well-put viewpoint.

I thought for sure that all Pixies albums were stuffed to the gills with filler but even the most lackluster track will show surprising reserves of charm when singled out for ignominy.

This is what I feel too.

I don't actually hate any Pixies songs, though some I really don't feel at all and I might get slightly annoyed with them for being in my way. UMass is the only one I actively dislike to any degree, and even it would be OK if it weren't for the lyrics.

I really dislike the "UK surf mix" slowed-down version of "Wave of Mutilation", as well.

me 2

I always used to skip "La La Love You" when listening to Doolittle, and I rarely skip tracks. But it has a habit of popping up on random and seems to have grown on me that way.

This thread has got me looking through album tracklists and playing the songs that I don't immediately remember from the title, thinking "this one can't be any good or I'd remember it", and liking them all. This turns out to be about 60% of Bossanova, an album I never really got into.

might make a playlist of all these. stuff like 'dancing the manta ray' and 'bailey's walk' is a lot of what i get out of them, now, i think; does a good job of reminding me how weird and alien they were when first i heard them.

boringly, my nominee is 'where is my mind?', because in light of the fincher movie it's hard not to hear it as trying to be Deep, which admittedly it totally wasn't, at the time

i should probably rip these to really l o u d mp3s; every time i download them they seem kind of half-assed, because they're from 90s cds and whoever ripped them in the early days of napster wasn't up to volume equalization

"monkey gone to heaven" is the only pixies song in which i hear a troubling Deepness. if man is 5, then the devil is 6 ... and if the devil is 6, then GOD IS 7!

love it to death despite the attempted profundity. not as much as "where is my mind", which might be the best thing they ever did, but a hell of a lot.

ha I remember my only irl indie rock friend on 5/6/07 and telling him it was national Pixies day (...was it?)

Favorite overheard concert conversation, ever:

Dude 1: Have you heard that new Pixies song yet? Bam Thwok?

Dude 2: No, is it any good?

Dude 1: It's pretty bad. I mean, I haven't heard it yet, but I've heard it's pretty bad.

― Josh in Chicago, Sunday, January 15, 2012 11:27 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i hear/have these kinds of conversations so much these days, especially about stuff like Lulu

Of all the tracks they released on studio albums, 'Stomy Weather' is undoubtedly my least favourite. I've got to say, I find some of the choices in this thread rather confusing - a lot of my personal favourites being named here!

'Trompe Le Monde', too, is probably my joint favourite Pixies album along with 'Surfer Rosa', with 'Bossanova' comfortably being my least favourite overall.

wow a lot of you guys seem to feel about Bossanova the same way I feel about Document (boring, too smooth, too much filler) Except that:

a) I went on to learn that I don't like REM as much as I thought I did

b) Document fits seamlessly into a late-80s concern-rock niche with other unappetizing luminaries such as Springsteen, U2, Tracy Chapman, the entire Live Aid lineup; Bossanova otoh is grounded in awesomeness: sci-fi escapism, surf music, New Day Rising

I guess the main problem that I have with 'Bossanova' is the order in which the songs are sequenced. I've always felt that song sequencing on an album is quite important, and if an artist gets it right then it gives an album continuity and momentum and generally makes the album more pleasant to listen to from start to finish. I think I've said this before here, but something like 'All Over The World' seems like a completely curious choice to place in the middle of the record, because it's long outro seems to suggest it would be more fitting as a penultimate track. I like both 'Blown Away' and 'Hang Wire', but I'm not convinced that placing them in a three-track run along with 'Stormy Weather' at the end of the second half of the record works.

All Over the World is the long strange one at the end of Side 1 (and Dig for Fire is the pop song that kicks off Side 2); 1990 was still p much dominated by cassettes iirc. That's how I first heard the album--on cassette

You are super OTM re: point B

Re: the 'Side 1'/'Side 2' thing... yeah, I could see what they were aiming for by placing 'All Over The World' at the end of 'Side 1' (if we were to look at this from a strictly vinyl/cassette perspective), but it still doesn't 'feel right' to me, for want of a better way of putting it. Think I'm gonna set a challenge for myself and see what running orders for this I can come up with.

neat!

tbh I always felt it was Doolittle who had the counterintuitive obfuscating running order

All Over The World times Debaser = Smells Like Teen Spirit

or Gouge Away + More than a Feeling

a late-80s concern-rock niche with other unappetizing luminaries such as Springsteen, U2, Tracy Chapman, the entire Live Aid lineup

Tunnel of Love and BITUSA are "concern rock?

dunno about tunnel of love, but BITUSA concerns itself with the tarnishing of the american dream, with curdled nostalgia. ironically, this caused it to resonate with reagan's "morning in america", farm aid, etc. contemporary analogues = billy joel's the nylon curtain, neil young's conservative moment, john cougar in general, outliers like the long ryders and the rainmakers. the erosion of "authentic american values" and the the woes of small town and rural america were huge concern points in the mid 80s.

sure I know all that but there's too much guitar and drums -- too much immersion in what Springsteen considers rock verities -- for me to believe Springsteen hadn't found a myth commensurate with his loss of faith in America, let alone that he deserves mention alongside the others.

Yeah, this is a total derail, but BituUSA lacks much specificity, at least not the sort that marked Mellencamp, U2 and Live Aid the concept. There's no "this is a song about heroin abuse" or "this is the songs about the farmers."

Trompe Le Monde is now my favorite Pixies record.

I vote for one of the several unremarkable tracks off Bossonova like maybe "Is She Weird".

― Darin, Sunday, January 15, 2012 10:44 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark

is she weird is the best song on bossanova!

the bbc vers owns

contenderizer otm. Born in the USA is totally concern rock,

(though it might be better than I'm giving it credit...)

well, i'm not a springsteen fan (or a hater), and i'm speaking very broadly about the way BITUSA seemed and seems to fit in with the musical and cultural trends of its moment. don't intend to denigrate the album by association or even in casually endorsing the concern rock description.

i'd say that "born in the USA" (the song) and "my hometown" are quite specific and pointed in their concerns, and that for reasons that aren't really springsteen's fault, his usual themes suddenly resonated quite strongly with the anxieties of the nation. this is true not just of those songs, but the album as a whole.

Subbacultcha, prob.

xp no worries contenderizer, i was more referring to my term upthread: "unappetizing luminaries"

(insert oral sex joke here)

At work and Vamos just came on shuffle and I shat myself - muted by the headphones I was wearing it sounded like someone was behind me and had decided to quit in dramatic fashion. I was a bit confused that noone else was reacting.

“You fucking die,” I said to her. I said, “You fucking die” to her. Huh? What? No, no. I was talking to Kim. I said, “You fucking die.” No, I, uh, we were just goofing around. No, no. It didn’t have anything to do with anything. She said, “Don’t anybody touch this — this is my stuff.” And I said, “You fucking die.” I was finishing her part for her. You know what I mean?