I can barely believe that this was originally a demo tape. Who'd have thought that a band like Pixies would be one that I could only appreciate as I approached middle age? Overall, then, Pixies come out as a solid *** band, and while that seems blindingly obvious to me now, that's a clear improvement from how I long assumed I would slot them. Still, there's a lot to like from the band, and it's neat that, for a band with a relatively short prime, they also produced a solid handful of B-sides to flesh things out. I'm not sure that, even with better intra-band relations, the group had a realistic chance of ever surpassing Doolittle (it's a really good album), but I find it a little disappointing that they never even came close to matching it afterwards. After starting at a remarkably high level and then refining their approach such that they could reach their peak with Doolittle, the tensions between Francis and Deal started to become insurmountable, and while the next two albums are certainly good, they also sound tired in a way that drags them down a bit ( Bossanova moreso, but Trompe Le Monde isn't immune). This isn't to say that I find the band fantastic, even when just accounting for its initial stretch through the release of Trompe le Monde. The lyrical approach he took as a companion to the alternately intense and dreamy guitar-heavy music (the loud-soft dynamics perhaps become overdone enough to become a cliche, but I don't mind it) was flat-out bizarre, filled with allusions to the Old Testament, with bizarre approaches to the topic of sex, and with glimpses into a life perspective that one could conservatively call "tweaked." It's a combination that shouldn't work, and for the longest time I tended to think it didn't really work, and yet, when I put the least bit of effort into sorting through the band, I came to find it quite appealing.
He clearly loved punk rock, but he came to punk rock relatively late, and his love of other kinds of music is always apparent, even if he typically kept his song lengths pretty compact. From the beginning, Francis was the band's creative center, even if this arrangement didn't necessarily satisfy everybody else (Deal in particular grew to resent the strangehold Francis held over the band's general direction), and his musical vision from the beginning was a fascinating one. Well, I feel like a fool, because for a brief window in the late 80s and early 90s, they were a tremendously interesting band with a signature sound, and while they didn't last very long in their hey-day (though they had multiple reunion albums in the 2010s), their importance goes well beyond the relatively short period where they really mattered.įormed in Boston in the mid-80s, Pixies ultimately settled into the following lineup: Charles Thompson IV (aka Black Francis, later aka Frank Black) on vocals and guitar Joey Santiago on lead guitar Kim Deal on bass guitar and David Lovering on drums. I had listened to a handful of their most famous songs and their most famous albums in a very casual way once or twice a piece, and I knew that they had been a tremendously influential band for Nirvana (whom I liked without reservation), but actually taking the time to get acquainted with them in a systematic way is something I pushed back nearly as long as I possibly could (not quite as long as right before I started to write about them, but within a few months of it). True, I added them to my eventual reviewing itinerary pretty early on, but this was largely out of respect to their reputation and to the fact that I had been given their albums in mp3 form (I eventually acquired legitimate copies). It took me way too long to give Pixies (and yes, in the most technical sense, it's Pixies, not The Pixies) a serious listen. "Bloody Your Hands On A Cactus Tree, Wipe It On Your Dress And Send It To Me" Pixies Completely confused by the rating system? Go here for an explanation.
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