Tonight’s selections from the Pixies third LP, Doolittle.
Doolittle is their most famous album and for understandable reasons. It's more even keel than Surfer Rosa and better mannered, too, forgoing the harsh live sound of Steve Albini for the lush, almost folksy one of Gil Norton, who had had previously worked with marshmallows like Echo and the Bunnymen. Its songs take aim at the big things important art is sometimes supposed to: good and evil, environmental ruin, Bible stories, death. "Monkey Gone to Heaven" features some allegory about the ozone layer, which in the late 1980s had the same conversational weight and place as "climate change"; "Gouge Away" flirts with Catholicism. "Hey" is practically their "Like a Prayer," an oblique gospel anchored by the premise that we too may one day break free our earthly bonds and ascend—a trope art has worked with for much longer than rock music has been around.
It's in Doolittle's margins—the faux-hillbilly cackling of "Mr. Grieves," "There Goes My Gun" and "Dead"—that the album becomes what it really is. At heart, the Pixies were a kind of American goth band, fascinated by rural violence, the intersection of lust and danger, creepy innkeepers and the sexual magnetism of strangers who wander into roadside cafés from parts unknown. Their biggest crossover single, "Here Comes Your Man," is less tied to European Dada than the rustic imagery of a pulp paperback: The boxcar, the nowhere plains, the big stone and the broken crown. — Pitchfork
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Here Comes Your Man [1989]
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Given how many Pixies-influenced bands are out there today, it's easy to forget just how revolutionary the Pixies were around the time they released Doolittle. While fans may split on which is the more monumental album, it or its predecessor, Surfer Rosa, the pairing of aggressive post-punk and surf pop, with hints of Latin influences, made the dominance of Doolittle difficult to argue with. By 1989, the Boston band had garnered a bevy of cult fans, but their sophomore album had broken them somewhat into the mainstream, at least of alternative rock.
In my third year of college I had the fortune of being in a French film class, being able to witness on the big screen the horrific weirdness of the Salvador Dali / Luis Buñuel film, Un Chien Andalou. It is from this short film that the opening song on Doolittle, the popular live classic "Debaser" was inspired. Let me just say this, Black Francis wasn't kidding around with the line, "Slicin' up eyeballs," and if you have a tendency to queasiness, you should probably avoid Un Chien Andalou. The song starts off with Kim Deal's throbbing bass, and also features her distinctive calm yin voice to Francis' yang. That guitar frenzied and manically voiced song kicks off the album, which is then taken up another notch with "Tame." For those introduced to the music of the Pixies through the more pop-friendly tunes such as "Gigantic" and "Here Comes Your Man," the threatening "Tame" was like a kick in the teeth. It still remains as one of the perfect examples of the Pixies' reined in, then completely unbridled aggression. To this day, I'm still unsure of which version of "Wave of Mutilation" I'm fonder of, the album version or the slower ‘U.K. Surf’ version. Either way, it's one of the Pixies' signature songs, featuring one of Francis' pet obsessions, the sea. — Treblezine
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Monkey Gone to Heaven [1989]
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What strikes you about listening to Doolittle again is the sheer scope of reference points that are hidden in its relatively brief running time. From European Cinema to Old-Testament sex and death tales, all bases are covered. What is even more striking is how venomous, funny, and downright odd it still sounds. Nothing still sounds quite like this album. Maybe it's because what the Pixies managed to do with Doolittle, even more so than the equally brilliant but sonically different Surfer Rosa, is condense forty years of recorded music into one listening experience. Blues, Surf, Pop, Punk, and Folk music are all in there with the album sounding like the perfect blend of Muddy Waters, The Ramones, Jan & Dean, and Black Sabbath via Talking Heads. It is the latter which are actually the closet comparison as both made artful, intelligent, pop music whilst retaining their avant-garde instincts.
From the bass rumblings of opener Debaser through to closing notes of Gouge Away we find a band of high intellect not afraid to take risks and at the absolute peak of their powers. Time signatures change at whim, verses can last four lines or even two, there's no such thing as a grandstanding guitar solo, there's even a song that utilities whistling to weirdly wonderful affect. Lyrically the album represents a high watermark in black humor and free-form poetry blending Dylan with Leviticus without once sounding forced. Doolittle is an utterly woozy and unsettling listen (like all great pop music should be) and the fact that the band chose to go with Gil Norton instead of returning to engineering maestro Steve Albini pays off as he adds just to right level of warmer textures (the strings on Monkey Gone To Heaven being a case in point) creating an album that managed to break out of the underground radio into the mainstream in particular here in the UK whilst still retaining its outsider spirit. — Louder Than War
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Debaser [1989]
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Frank Black thinks 'Gouge Away' is the best song on 'Doolittle' — NME
I agree with him.
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Gouge Away [1989]
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WHO’S TALKING TO WHO?
Jimmy Kimmel: George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Omar Apollo
Jimmy Fallon: Trevor Noah, Antoni Porowski, Andrea Campos, Lil Baby
Stephen Colbert: Jeremy Strong, Ed Sheeran
Seth Meyers: Johnny Knoxville, Jake Lacy, Pusha T, Elena Bonomo
James Corden: Jamie Lee Curtis, Jason Blum, Zach Zimmerman
The Daily Show: Quintessa Swindell
SPOILER WARNING
A late night gathering for non serious palaver that does not speak of that night’s show. Posting a spoiler will get you brollywhacked. You don’t want that to happen to you. It's a fate worse than a fate worse than death.
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Wave of Mutilation (UK Surf Version) [1989]
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LAST WEEK'S POLL: YOU ARE GIVEN A RANDOM PHOBIA, HOW F*CKED ARE YOU?
Totally fine 13%
OK but will be challenging at times 40%
Screwed but can still live with it 27%
Absolutely f*cked 20%