PIXIES Poll: The best track on Doolittle

I disagree and feel like the second side is kind of aimless-verging-on-pointless

But I'm a staunch Surfer Rosa partisan, so

"Silver" gets such a bad rep in this thread. I've always loved it. A little bit of solemn sorrow before "Gouge Away" rips everything to shreds.

Kind of a blues song, really.

I know this is sacrilege but if I had to delete one song from this it would be the much-loved "Gouge Away." "I Bleed," on the other hand, is one of the high points of the whole Pixies catalog, probably the very very best playoff of BF's voice against KD's voice there ever was.

Why Gouge Away?

Because something about it reads to me as "the generic Pixies song, about which all I can say is that it sounds good and sounds like the Pixies." It's like the mean of all their other songs.

Generic Pixies song to me would be something like Allison.

Dead

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGNhW-iSY_g

^ only one i would ever skip but yeah c'mon, under 40 minutes is pretty tight.

Also Frank going all crazy dog noises on Crackity Jones is A+++++

Gouge Away may be the "mean" of all their songs but it is also my favourite of all their songs.

I just got an email with a link to four more new songs - I'm not sure I'm going to even listen to them.

If someone told me the four new songs were the Pixies I would have had my doubts. It sounds a lot like, dunno, Weezer maybe? A couple are Pixies-ish, I guess, one called "Indie Cindy" and one called "What Goes Boom." "Another Toe" is a nice little song. Black Francis barely sounds like Black Francis though.

Generic mean of the Pixies = Into tge White

Gouge Away is cool bcz they flip the switch: instead of shaving off one from the regular four-measure phrasing for added angularity/tension, they add one to make it five measures and then try to cope withwith the resultant diffuseness.

Plus I am always a little taken with how, after an album's worth of elliptical and esoteric lyrics, how he deploys the Samson and Delilah story in sych a straightforward manner. Its not my favorite song by any means, but the whole Hey/Silver/GA sequence is not what I mean when I gripe about this album

Sorry bout typos

Pixies: Doolittle 25 Tracklist:

Disc One – Doolittle
01. Debaser
02. Tame
03. Wave of Mutilation
04. I Bleed
05. Here Comes Your Man
06. Dead
07. Monkey Gone to Heaven
08. Mr. Grieves
09. Crackity Jones
10. La La Love You
11. No. 13 Baby
12. There Goes My Gun
13. Hey
14. Silver
15. Gouge Away

Disc Two – Doolittle: Peel Sessions & B-Sides
01. Dead (Peel Session
02. Tame *
03. There Goes My Gun (Peel Session)
04. Manta Ray (Peel Session)
05. Into The White *
06. Wave of Mutilation (Peel Session)
07. Down To The Well (Peel Session)
08. Manta Ray
09. Weird At My School
10. Dancing The Manta Ray
11. Wave of Mutilation (UK Surf)
12. Into The White
13. Bailey’s Walk

Disc Three – Doolittle: Demos
01. Debaser
02. Tame *
03. Wave of Mutilation (First Demo) *
04. I Bleed *
05. Here Comes Your Man (1986 Demo)
06. Dead *
07. Monkey Gone To Heaven *
08. Mr. Grieves *
09. Crackity Jones *
10. La La Love You *
11. No. 13 Baby – VIVA LA LOMA RICA (First Demo) *
12. There Goes My Gun *
13. Hey (First Demo) *
14. Silver *
15. Gouge Away *
16. My Manta Ray Is All Right *
17. Santo *
18. Weird At My School (First Demo) *
19. Wave Of Mutilation *
20. No. 13 Baby
21. Debaser (First Demo) *
22. Gouge Away (First Demo) *

* = Previously unreleased

think i've heard all of that previously unreleased stuff on bootleg. the doolittle demos weren't terribly interesting iirc.

I hear they've been curating this for 25 years.

"Silver" is probably the only Kim Deal song (in any of her projects) that I kind of actively dislike.

'Gouge Away' is my favourite track on this these days. My third favourite album of theirs after Trompe le Monde and Surfer Rosa.

Silver was on the Pod Demos so it's very surprising to me that Charles wrote it

I know that they both received co-writing credit for it but I never heard any breakdown wrt the division of labor, and two-chord country dirges happen to be one of Kim's many specialties (hello Mad Lucas), so given also that it was orig slated for a non-Charles side project, I assumed that the song was mostly Kim's and Charles got royalties for the guitar noise at the end or something

This album is a bit of a mess. Way too much throwaway (most of the songs with single-figure votes) to be a classic. The great stuff is still great IMO

^

(Aside from I Bleed)

I couldn't disagree more with the both of you if I were wearing David Lovering's boxer shorts. It is one album I wouldn't take a single song off of; even the weaker moments, of which there are very few, contribute to the structure of the whole.

The "Hey whadayoo know..." bit of "Dead" is truly one of the greatest of things.

Yeah I love pretty much all the whole thing. The only one I don't really have time for is Crackity Jones - I've never liked their frantic cowpunk-ish type songs (see also: I'm Amazed)

They don't believe in Mr. Grieves, but I have another pinion.

Yeah, Crackity Jones is probably the closest thing to filler on it, but, complementary to what I said above, it works well as a bridge between the two songs surrounding it.

I’m just an idiot, best to disregard my pronouncements

Lol youre alright, Im w you totally on Kim being one of the best songwriters!

This was the absolute peak, right here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0bxPbWicgc

Been playing Doolittle a lot on the road lately, because by chance the cd happened to be within arms reach in the car. Renewing my love for this damn album once again, the worn-off vinyl stashed away somewhere. Read up on the wiki for crying out loud, especially about the lyrics: so many biblical references that pass me by. And I was force-fed the bible till age 6. It was weird to read about Frank Black crossed with the bible and the many biblical references. Pixies is the one band where I feel the music up to a tee without knowing what the lyrics are actually about. I enjoy them partly because their lyrics mean nothing to me. And I intend to keep it that way.

(fp'd all of you suckers who said this album needs "trimming". Fuck that shit. No filler all killer.)

Also 'Wave of Mutilation' was robbed, obv, because it is the best song in the universe. But I can live with the results, regardless.

Good album, but it's no Surfer Rosa.

I beg you, honestly, what makes 'Surfer Rosa' a better album than 'Doolittle'?

tame is def my favourite on here, one of the best screamers the pixies ever did

They both need trimming IMO

Well, Steve Albini for one.

xp

Come on man, humour me. "Albini, for one" is a p weak take explaining why you prefer Surfer Rosa over Doolittle. Albini is good, and he touched upon the ceiling of magic at times, but with the Pixies he did not.

I find Doolittle overly slick and its more overt poppiness does not cater to my lingering wannabe edginess. I love In Utero far more than Nevermind for the exact same reasons. I also think Surfer Rosa has the better songs, except maybe for Hey. That is all.

No album under 40 minutes needs trimming, tbh. I don't know if it was this album or "Trompe Le Monde" where Frank Black cited Buddy Holly to justify song lengths. Certainly "Trompe" has some impressively short songs, but Doolittle songs are pretty short on average as well. Bossanova has often been my fave, and coincidence or not has the longest songs, I think.

Fair. I disagree (re: "better songs". Pixies never bettered songs like Debaser, Tame, Hey, Monkey, Mutilation etc) but at least I know what you mean now.

I too love In Utero way more than Nevermind.

xp

xp It was 'Doolittle' where Frank Black justified the song length mentioning Buddy Holly :)

dunno think motorway to roswell is as good as anything on Doolittle

Also 'Wave of Mutilation' was robbed, obv, because it is the best song in the universe.

(And Nevermind is SO much better than In Utero it's not in the same universe.)

I was a Bossanova stan for a number of years—partly because I truly thought it was better, but also to be contrarian—however, at some point within the last 10 years, I've looked deep within myself and made peace with the fact that Doolittle is their most well known and best selling album for a reason: it's perfect.

A lot of people consider Surfer Rosa superior to Doolittle which mystifies me, I think it's probably a function of SR (or that era) being your first exposure to Pixies

I kiss you JF, if you allow me to do that with full consent, because you are otm.

I heard Doolittle first fwiw (in the late 90s). When I later discovered Surfer Rosa, the extra noisiness and amateurishness struck me as a more optimal take on their overall aesthetic. And despite its overexposure, I still stand by 'Where Is My Mind?'.

I think Albini's "recording" has aged far better than Norton's "production," but for an album in 1989, Doolittle still sounded pretty rock n roll.