Pixies -- Hipster Music

Bossanova

It's not a good sign that they open the album with an instrumental. I don't really like instrumentals. In fact, they always feel like filler to me. If you absolutely have to do an instrumental, stick it at track seven where it's not going to do any damage. As it stands, I usually skip right to the second track, "Rock Music," which is a bit of an atonal screecher from Black Francis. Oy, finally at track three they start to hit their stride with the oddball space odyssey, "Velouria." The echo and reverb does make me a little homesick for the crunching production of Surfer Rosa, but I have to move on. This thing starts to fee like an Ed Wood movie at some point. I'm not really sure why. They do certainly sound more mature on this album, which is usually a euphemism for sounding tired. It's more weary than anything else. I'm sure this is the one on which they were fighting on a daily basis, and Francis was slowly absorbing the whole band into his sizable girth. Don't get me wrong, there is still good stuff on this album, but it just doesn't have that urgency that their earlier stuff had. It's as if their batteries just wore down a little bit.

Come on Pilgrim

I'm not sure what's up with all the foreign language stuff, but this debut by a weird college art rock band is stunning in its pure energy and innovative take on punk. Black Francis has his anxious, high-pitched thing going on, with Kim Deal's echoey backing vocals and the funny Western ghost thing happening, with the mix of Spanish and English and general feeling of the American West permeating their songs (despite being from Mass). The thing is a little scattered, and a tiny bit one-noted, but it's a solid debut that certainly hints at awesome things to come. "Losing my penis to a whore with disease!" is a line that should at least make you want to listen to more.

Death to the Pixies

Doolittle

"Debaser" is my second favorite Pixies song. I f'n love it. I will play it on any jukebox I find just to piss people off. It's a great, great song. And it starts off what is actually my second favorite Pixies album (a close second to Surfer Rosa). I mean, they're such art fags writing a punk song about a Dali film. It's nerd heaven, and I am their disciple. They really do reign in the craziness on this album, smoothing out some of the angles and rough edges in favor of excellent song writing and more subdued production (anything is subdued after having Albini twiddle the knobs). Deal's bass is still the driving force behind these songs, and Black Francis is coming into his own as more than a yelper. It's actually funny to hear him sing. He's pretty good. Who can resist "Here Comes Your Man," really? This is the record that made them the muscular R.E.M. They were the college rock gods for the coastal carnivore set. It practically looked like Francis ate Michael Stipe in that first real video of theirs.

Surfer Rosa

From the opening downbeat of "Bone Machine," Surfer Rosa's first track, you know this album is gonna kick some ass. Driven by the radical production of Steve Albini (can this guy make even a shit sandwich sound good?), this album is all up in your face. And despite there being a lot to grab onto here, this thing is still all knees and elbows. Black Francis talk/sings/yelps his way through song after song filled with skulls and body parts and illusions to things near and far. There's terror and humor, and even a softer side of a band that would just as soon give you a hotfoot as spit something vile in your eye. Everything they do on this album just has an edge of smart to it. They aren't your daddy's punk band giving the middle finger and farting into the mic; they're the thinking man's college rock band. Oddly enough it's actually the Kim Deal sung song, "Gigantic" that kind of steals the show here. Like her song with The Breeders, "Cannonball," of a few years later, this thing just sticks in your head and begs for you to hit repeat. I know I wanted to marry her after hearing it. Even "Where Is My Mind" points to Frank Black's later career direction and shows us that these guys are not one-trick ponies. One of the best pure pop punk albums of all time, and certainly my favorite Pixies record.

Trompe le Monde

They've obviously turned the page here. Where as Bossanova sounded tired, Trompe le Monde sounded refreshed. Refreshedóbut different. It's Black Francis emerging from his cocoon as Frank Black, shedding Kim and Joey and Whathisface as he moved on. He's a guy who loves outer space, and this album has it in spades. What it doesn't have is a lot of Kim Deal vocals (shame, really) and her spare bass lines. But back arethe more driving beats, the energy and the feeling that somebody gives a shit. It's the album that Frank had obviously been itching to make for years. Again, I really don't love the production on this thing, as everything seems to be buried in reverb and whatnot, but it's a much better output than you'd generally see from a break-up album. Of course the year after this came out was also my sophomore year at Syracuse when we lost to UMASS in the NCAA tourney, and every Masshole from here to the end of time screamed "It's educationaaaaaaaaaaal!" up and down the halls. Or maybe that was just in my head. It makes me wonder what the hell the Violent Femmes would sound like if they had continued on. Probably like crap.