141. Pixies, "Doolittle"

 

There comes a time in every indie kid's life when he or she has to pick their favorite Pixies album and reader, this is mine.  I remember buying this record when it came out in 1989 and listening to "Monkey Gone to Heaven" over and over and over.  I don't know what it was about that song - I mean, it's a great song, don't get me wrong - that just transfixed me but it sidetracked me for a while before I moved on to the rest of this beautiful album.

It's not hard, of course, to pick this as your favorite Pixies album; it's easily the most accessible and pop-adjacent of their oeuvre.  The first song is Debaser!  How can you get more radio-friendly than "Debaser" (by Pixies standards, I mean)?  And those lyrics!

Got me a movie
I want you to know
Slicing up eyeballs
I want you to know
Girlie so groovy
I want you to know
Don't know about you
But I am un chien andalusia

Talk about appealing to artsy 80's kids who immediately picked up the references to Luis Buñuel's film Un Chien Andalou, which, yes, features footage of a woman's eyeball being sliced with a razor blade.  (At first I thought he was singing "slicing up Bibles," which is just as thrilling and transgressive to a kid who grew up with a religious mother).  Fun fact: back when I was on the dating apps my handle was "Chienandalusian;" if we ran into each other back then, you may be entitled to financial compensation.

The third song, "Wave of Mutilation," is another absolutely legendary Pixies track, featuring a super melodic vocal and the crunchy guitars that are one of the band's trademarks.  "Here Comes Your Man," probably the Pixies' most straight pop song, was written by Black Francis when he was a teenager.  I wish I had written songs like that when I was a teenager!  I have spent hours breaking down the vocal trying to figure out why it works so well.  I also always wondered about the first line, "Outside there's a box car waiting," because of the R.E.M. song "Carnival of Sorts (Box Car)" and yep, I was right, Francis copped to using the word because he heard it in the R.E.M. song and liked it.

"Mr. Grieves" starts out with a kind of reggae thing and then just goes off; it's a wild song, but also captivating in its own way.  "Crackity Jones" is a Latin-influenced romp, supposedly about Francis' roommate in Puerto Rico during a semester abroad.

"Tame," the second song, is worth spending a minute on because it really sets the prototype for what the Pixies became famous for, and so influential for - the quiet/loud/quiet dynamic.  It starts with Kim Deal's bass and David Lovering's drums.  The Francis' weird, strangled vocal, and then BAM it breaks out into full screaming vocal and guitar, then back to quiet.  It's a dynamic that would influence a lot of groups, most notably, of course, Nirvana.

I think the Pixies were the first indie act to do the big reunion tour thing, back in 2004.  I somehow missed out on those shows but the idea certainly caught on, with everyone from Jawbreaker to Pavement doing the reunion thing now (repeatedly, as it turns out).  Anyway, great album.

Does this album deserve to be in the Top 500? Yes.