Product Description
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Brani1.Debaser2.Tame3.Wave of Mutilation4.here comes your man5.i
bleed6.dead7.monkey gone to Heaven8.mr.grieves9.crackty
Jones10.La love you11.no. 13 Baby12.there goes my
13.hey14.silver15.gouge away
.co.uk
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If you want to plot a classic rise and fall pattern in the
career of a band, look no further than the Pixies. This middle
album, third of five, is the pinnacle of their noise equation:
taut, terrifying and tightly edited, these 15 tracks (best known:
"Monkey Gone To Heaven"; best quality, the insane "Debaser"; or
the predatory "Hey") have the confidence that was missing from
Come On Pilgrim ( /exec/obidos/ASIN/B000002HAH/${0} ) and Surfer
Rosa ( /exec/obidos/ASIN/B0000072XJ/${0} ), but without the
bloated pomp of Bossanova ( /exec/obidos/ASIN/B000026YEG/${0} )
or Trompe Le Monde ( /exec/obidos/ASIN/B000026YEO/${0} ). Black
Francis, as Charles Thompson IV was known then, surfs fast with
his and Joey Santiago's guitars, tempered by the groundswell of
Kim Deal's fine bass and counter vocals. It is like the last
stand of US indie-dom: intelligent music encased in its precious,
intricate and trademark Vaughn Oliver sleeve. Charlie Porter
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Review
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If anything is likely to make you feel old, it's the grim
realisation that some of your favourite ever records are over 20
years old. Take, for example, Pixies' Doolittle. Originally
released in April 1989, it came in a year which had already given
us New Order's Technique, Lou Reed's New York and was about to
unleash astonishing debuts from both The Stone Roses and Soul II
Soul alongside The Cure's last fully good album, Disintegration.
A vintage year indeed.
Now 20 years on, Doolittle's power and influence has barely been
beaten. It was this album that inspired Kurt Cobain's vision for
Nirvana, created the quiet/loud dynamic that Mogwai owe a career
to, had everyone from Bowie to Radiohead, Blur to PJ Harvey
awestruck and when they reformed - one of the first to do so in
the last few years before it got silly - it was Doolittle that
many middle-aged indiepeople were wanting to hear and howl and
scream along to.
It's not hard to see why. After building themselves a nice
reputation on the back of their 'proper' debut, Surfer Rosa, it
was Doolittle that took them from being fawned over in Melody
Maker into the actual charts to become one of 4AD's biggest
successes of that time. With the key singles Monkey Gone To
Heaven and Here Comes Your Man, Black Francis had distilled
death, horror, whores, biblical imagery and undersea myths into a
succession of short sharp chunks of immense catchiness. The
unearthly howls of Debaser and Dead; the calm dead-eyed destroyer
of Wave Of Mutilation; the warped southern soul of Hey; the
controlled abandon and angles that Joey Santiago coaxed from his
guitar throughout. Even drummer David Lovering got a song with La
La Love You. And that's not to mention that the very presence of
Kim Deal - a year away from inventing The Breeders - on this
album consolidated her position as one of the coolest women on
Earth.
There is little flab or room for negotiation with Doolittle, its
15 tracks could be released now and still wipe the floor of many
of late noughties efforts. It's as perfect today as it was back
then. Genuinely amazing. --Ian Wade
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