PIXIES Poll: The best track on Doolittle

i'm listening to Trompe rigth now and i'm pretty sure it's better than Doolittle.

i still love both it's just that the other three are better. actually Trompe is awesome.

http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lo64ouJUSh1qa8xyfo1_500.gif

ok full disclosure - i haven't listened to TLM in probably...15 years? i remember the songs vaguely but i have it on cassette and never really felt super compelled to hear it again.

Head On: Mary Chain original vs. Pixies version

in a place they say is dead
in a lake that is not an ocean
i count about a million head
all the tiiiiiiiiiiiime
there's a mo-tion

would have voted for Debaser or Gouge Away. It figures that one of the two songs on this album I always skip won the poll (the other being the overplayed at the time 'Here Comes Your Man')

if I had the rank the albums it would be Doolittle >>> Surfer Rosa > Bossanova > Trompe Le Monde >>> Come On Pilgrim

I can't fathom people rating Trompe Le Monde #1... it seems like such a pieced together and incomplete album, and wasn't received well by anyone I knew at the time.

I'm relistening to all of their stuff on Spotify now, ha. I haven't listened to this stuff in years.

I've loved Trompe since the day it came out - sometimes I feel like it might be my fave Pixies album, but I think that's more down to what other people have noted above...it's their best-sequenced album, and to me that almost makes it feel like their most consistent.

FWIW I'll never understand why people consider "Space (I Believe In)" to be filler. It's odd, sure, but it still seems far too strong to me to be considered filler.

fwiw my hands down fave track on this record is 'wave of mutilation'

whores in my head

I'm absolutely baffled that "Hey" would be the #1 choice on an album with both "Debaser" and "Tame", let alone the other usual well-known hits. I had to actually listen to the album again to remember how "Hey" even went. Insanity.

There are these odd turns on Hey, then how it struggles to a chorus that is suddenly sneaks up at you and also feels aborted. Its quite unlike them, as good as Tame might be they've done a dozen songs that are around that ballpark.

Would have gone for Gouge Away myself, love that wasted riff...

doolittle has always been the most diluted pixies album for me, drawing on some of the potency and energy of surfer rosa, but watering it down with a bit of a bland pop sensibility. i like how bossanova and trompe le monde seem to be doing their own thing altogether, not stuck somewhere in between unhinged and conservative.

albini's dry sound was never suited for a pixies record. i dislike the monolithic drum sound on surfer rosa and think it kinda drown the songs. imo that record could have benefited with a more detailed/less thundering approach to production, i even prefer come on pilgrim's tiny SST-ish sound to the bombast of SR.

Gouge Away and Hey save the second half of this album, which goes downhill badly after Monkey. Then again i think Surfer Rosa goes down even further after Where Is My Mind.

Bossanova's heights aren't as strong as either but is better sequenced, same with Trompe

albini's dry sound was never suited for a pixies record. i dislike the monolithic drum sound on surfer rosa and think it kinda drown the songs.

bullllllllllllllllllllllshhhiitttt

to the first part anyway. your own tastes are your own tastes, fine. but surfer rosa sounds exactly as it should.

i get surfer rosa is one of the quintessential albini jobs. anyway, i've always mantained the gil norton re-recorded versions of gigantic and river euphrates are miles better than the SR ones (they sound even grittier!), so i think a less clumsy approach to production would have suited surfer rosa better.

Yeah, I'm not a big Steve Albini fan or anything, but his style really works for Surfer Rosa.

"A patchwork pinch loaf from a band who at their top dollar best are blandly entertaining college rock. Their willingness to be "guided" by their manager, their record company and their producers is unparalleled. Never have I seen four cows more anxious to be led around by their nose rings."

yeah yeah

No nose rings in sight, Steve-dawg.

http://shiva.blogspot.com/pixies.jpg

Wait, what's kim doing down there?

"How I Met Your Mother" used "Hey" over its closing scenes last night. When I hear the opening notes I was like, "CBS licensed a Pixies song? o_O"

A. "heard" obvs, not "hear"
B. Yes, I actually said the emoticon out loud.

"Hey" is a bad-ass song that I often get stuck in my head.

are pixies songs expensive to license?

well the entire Doolittle album is on Rock Band, so it's hard to say

Rates probably went up after Fight Club

It's not so much the cost, but that The Old People's Network used such a song at all. HIMYM generally uses pretty decent music, though, but still.

If Glee can do "Heads Will Roll", anyone is likely to do anything

It's not so much the cost, but that The Old People's Network used such a song at all. HIMYM generally uses pretty decent music, though, but still.

It's a 22 year-old song. That would be like Full House using...The Beach Boys!

Not quite, but the Pixies are kind of an institution now

Wait, what's kim doing down there?

― rustic italian flatbread, Thursday, November 10, 2011 2:35 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

*zzzzzzip*

Er... I dunno... er... stuff, man.

The worst thing I could say about Doolittle is that I'm tired of hearing 'Debaser' and 'Here Comes Your Man' in rock bars... Also even though I've only ever owned it on CD it really feels like an album of two sides (Side 1 being the pop half) and it's that run of songs towards the end that really makes it for me. I love the production too, I mean there's no way that beautiful coda on 'No. 13 Baby' would've turned out that way with Albini (though I like his work on Surfer Rosa just fine). 'Hey' is an incredible song.

having listened to all of the Pixies albums in chronological order today, Bossanova is certainly missing fangs compared to the others

B-b-b-but..."Rock Music"!

the only songs on the album I noticed were "Velouria", "Allison" and "Dig For Fire"; nothing else made an impression

"Rock Music" is the band's most ott banger...like "Planet of Sound" but more evil and awesome.

dan otm. I'd add "Is She Weird."

"Rock Music" is the band's most ott banger...like "Planet of Sound" but more evil and awesome.

listening to it now, it basically sounds like a slower take on "Wave of Mutilation" with shouting instead of singing; there's nothing special about it at all and stuff like "Tame" and "Dead" blow it out of the water

:(

Waht?!

(Btw "Rock Music" doesn't have the unbelievably annoying fauxhonkytonk guitar riff repeated over every chorus like Planet of Drownd)

I listened to the Bossanova again the other day to try to give it a fair shake and I came to much the same conclusion (again) as Dan - but also made me wonder if the people that really love it are more or LESS familiar with the surf music that inspired stuff like "Cecilia Ann". When it first came out I think the people around me that were most blown away were the ones that didn't really know the Ventures or Duane Eddy much and thought that Pixies were onto something really original. Listening back through Bossanova the other day it struck me that the surf stuff on the album was so much more listless than any of the things that no doubt inspired it....it really seemed like they were just walking through it rather than producing a passionate homage.

Interesting that you hear that as faux honky tonk. It just sounds like rock.

(Btw "Rock Music" doesn't have the unbelievably annoying fauxhonkytonk guitar riff repeated over every chorus like Planet of Drownd)

:::: mouse pointer moves slowly towards sb link :::::

yeah i don't hear a lot of honky tonk in that riff!
and bossanova has a lot more going on than just surf rock...i don't think it always succeeds, but it does strike me as the band's most ambitious record.

planet of sound's riff strikes me as almost prototypical santiago tbh

There is a bit of greasy, bar-room, blues-rock in that riff, not that there's anything wrong with that.

Have fun in your greasy bar-room, folks!