Pixies: Classic or Dud

100%, Deal takes Francis out ANY day.
although Title TK is my favourite so I may not be “of the majority” either

Huh. I love Kim Deal, but I don't like anything by her as much as I like the Pixies with her. I like every single Pixies track, b-sides and all, but I've really never gotten that excited about the Breeders, first album perhaps aside. Post-Pixies, sure, I'd probably gravitate toward Deal because her six albums with the Breeders/Amps are as a whole better than Frank's (counts) 18 post-Pixies albums. Though of the ones I've heard or remember, I don't recall anything bad, and the times I saw him solo were pretty strong whereas the five or so times I've seen Deal live were pretty erratic.

i prefer the breeders as well. doesn’t stop doolittle from being the best rock album ever

Incidentally, Pixies is another band I love that I've just never sought out live clips of. But this set is great:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzA3eCHI2ns

I think the first two Frank Black solo albums are really great, basically carrying forward Trompe Le Monde

yeah i think they still sound very cool — his early solo releases are kind of like a West Coast speculative fiction novel mixed with memoir, looking back at a weird southern California past and forward to an apocalyptic future. they're interesting!

Cult of Ray wasn’t bad. It suffered from heinous cover art.

For a while, I'd rank their greater output as Pod, Surfer Rosa > the other three Pixie Albums > Last Splash, Teenager of the Year > various solid tracks mixed among the rest, like

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQgV9q6fl1I

First 3 Frank Blacks over any Breeders for me, but Breeders win for overall consistency.

First Catholics album has some fun stuff but really tanks later on. Gotta buy Oddballs now, I've waited too long.

hoo boy bendy, if that's a highlight . . . yikes.

Hmm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbXP8PdwnWM

well that could suck a golf ball through a garden hose

That one's ok when judged against other nu-Pixies work, which is how you have to approach these things now.

I thought this one was better, though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7ofPSefhyQ

I was thinking the other day of making a thread on artists who had an amazing burst of creativity but pieced it out slowly over several albums. (Lou Reed's VU-era songs, Liz Phair's first songs, etc.) Forgot that the Pixies had the "purple" tape demos, which had songs that ended up on all four of their original albums.

I suspect that’s “all artists”, it’s just that we only know about those ones

It's related to that "you have your entire life to make a first album, and six weeks to make the second" principle. Anyway, Cheap Trick is one of those bands. Van Halen, too; they were mining old demos as recently as the final album, the DLR reunion record.

Doggerel is surprisingly solid imho - in a "this sounds like a band that listened to the first four Pixies albums" kind of way though. Nothing groundbreaking

I need to hear this

Curious to check this out. While still standing multiple levels below their original run, each new album since the reunion has been marginally better than the previous.

I don't know if Arte videos are region limited but this is going to be online for 6 Months: live at L'Olympia, Paris, March 16 2023

https://www.arte.tv/fr/videos/113636-000-A/pixies-a-l-olympia/

setlist: (37 songs) https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/pixies/2023/lolympia-bruno-coquatrix-paris-france-53bbbbfd.html

He's achieved more success than I ever will, but... is its ever weird that he has an entire career based on 3 or 4 years in his early 20s? I guess it's a common rock thing.

Kinda like the Violent Femmes. They recorded other great stuff, but most of the accolades are based on an initial burst of songwriting that trailed off.

He's achieved more success than I ever will, but... is its ever weird that he has an entire career based on 3 or 4 years in his early 20s? I guess it's a common rock thing.

― paulhw,

Nah.

the first two Frank Black records are great

First three are fantastic, I love them as much as Pixies stuff although there are patchy areas but I feel that way about some Pixies albums too

I've probably posted this before, but my favorite post-Pixies thing he's done is the Golem rock album from 2011.

I should also say that although you'd probably not get him working on an album for several years, he has done pretty much what he wanted, I can't see a lot of pandering at all. Most of his solo stuff had a blues-country rock thing and it actually intensified around the time of the reunion and Grand Duchy seemed pretty different from what little I've heard of that. A good chunk of this stuff might sound unrecognizable to fans of early Pixies.

I never noticed this before- that sublime “and evolving from the sea” section of The Sad Punk is almost surely a callback to the “and when you’re high” section of Welcome to the Jungle. Very similar(almost transcendent) feel to me.

Apparently Paz got fired. Speculation is that it was for publicly supporting Ariel Pink. Wonder if Black still fires people by fax.

While still far short of the original run, I actually thought the two albums with Paz were the most interesting things they'd done since the reunion.

I wondered about the Pink thing but her posts about that were some time ago at this point. Either way too bad, as I am a big fan of hers in general and only last week was thinking I might bother to see the pIxies again the next time they come through mainly because she's playing with them.

Maybe she really did want to move on and work on her own stuff?

I mean, she herself described it as firing..

https://preview.redd.it/interesting-exchange-v0-5vdzmtmsupmc1.jpeg?auto=webp&s=891238057aa3f22f5cb0f94f76cfb4c0f8aa254d

(fwiw she appears to have since deleted that one and her public statements have been more balanced)

ahhhhh, nm

lots of rumors circulating that she's a right wing loon, but these seem to be based off her Pink defense plus she posted something when javier milei won in Argentina that some took as support. But there doesn't seem to be any other evidence.

lol at losing Paz damaging the Pixies permanently. You can't kill what is already dead!

lots of rumors circulating that she's a right wing loon, but these seem to be based off her Pink defense plus she posted something when javier milei won in Argentina that some took as support. But there doesn't seem to be any other evidence.

― I? not I! He! He! HIM! (akm), Friday, March 8, 2024 8:24 AM (ten minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah but there's always more, i can't think of one time when an artist had some little flirtations with right wing/terf whatever stuff and it didn't end up being worse

Barbara Motchan
@barbara_motchan
·
Mar 5
Replying to
@PIXIES
Paz made the Pixies who they are today!! The Pixies will be nothing now without Paz. Just tell the truth.....

BLACK FRANCIS, YOU FIRED PAZ!!

lmao

I mean, I will say the two studio albums she played on were miles better than any of the other reunion era studio stuff, but I'm not sure how much credit she takes for that.

she wrote a bunch of stuff on beyond the eirie or whatever it's called, but it's still not like, great. It's ok.

yeah but there's always more, i can't think of one time when an artist had some little flirtations with right wing/terf whatever stuff and it didn't end up being worse

Neil Young, but that was the '80s - most of America was crazy for Reagan.

But yeah, I can't say it's a big loss. I can't see anyone getting nostalgic for the Paz-era of the Pixies 20 years from now.

maybe they'll hire a third Kim

Jong Un

nah the band already has a dictator

They shouldn't hire but they should back Kim Carnes for an album, how random and awesome would that be?

nah the band already has a dictator

ha ha ha

Kim Gordon joins and they reinvent themselves as mumbletrap.

As long as it isn't Kim Mitchell.

Thought the thread revive was for the BBC Sessions album which came out today and rocks super hard. Version of “In Heaven” is brutal and beautiful.