Pixies: Classic or Dud

ha, yes

but can't you just hear it

oh dammit, I was going to rickroll

is she weird
is she wack
cuz OPP-O-SITTES AT-TRACT!

I first heard the Pixies well after they broke up. I think I was 15, which means it was '96; I had to search them out, which I did because they were constantly being mentiomed in Nirvana and Breeders articles. My grandma took me on a shopping spree and I had her buy me Bossanova on cassette, mostly because of some derogatory comment on a review of Last Splash about how "No Aloha" sounded like an outtake from that album. I instantly loved Bossanova and a few weeks later the school druggie approached me asking to borrow it. He had a copy of Doolittle (one of maybe five irl ppl I've met that were into the Pixies; we're actually still good friends) which he lent me. I wasn't as big a fan of that one, though I like it more now.

But it wasn't long after that that I somehow procured Surfer Rosa on CD, and THAT hooled me. Still one of my all-time favourite albums...

Hooled = hooked

I love reading vintage ILM threads like this front-to-back, it's like examining the rings of a redwood trunk

"Every cute girl knew the Pixies" is totally OTM, and I initially was persuaded to like them by a cute girlfriend. Trompe Le Monde was where they lost the cute girls, and is probably the only album of theirs that I still play from time to time. Wasn't there an indie-schmindie song back in the 90's where someone (probably female) was berated for liking the Pixies? Dead Milkmen? Or someone else?

Ok, now I'm going crazy trying to remember that song. I think there was a lyric like, "You love the Pixies!" but I may be making that up....

Now I'm thinking it was, "You like the Pixies," and maybe it was an Irish/Scottish band. Fuck, this is killing me....

sounds like Noise Addict/Ben Lee imho

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7BE6t2CxYs

I think that may be it. Unless I can remember something else, I'm going to go with it.

I'm sure I didn't know any cute girls who liked the Pixies until I started hanging out in the outloud room.

Are you thinking of Pop Queen by Ben Lee, that has the line "you love the Pixies" in it?

Yeah, that's it, thanks! (Though I was probably kind of mushing that together with the other video in my memory). I should probably go back and listen to that Ben Lee album again, 'cause it's sounding pretty good in these videos...

Anyway, I definitely remember Pixies as having slightly surprising girl appeal in the early 90's.

What's so surprising about it? It's not like Killdozer or something.

Not exaggerating in the slightest, 95% of my female friends in high school and college were Pixies fans. Not just "I like that one song" but fans. To this day that is probably still true, but only 3-4 of them went to the reunion tour.

Well, them's the advantage of growing up middle of nowhere, I guess...

I always thought starting a Pixies cover band and playing high school dances would be a fun way to earn money.

This thread is making me want to listen to "No. 13 Baby" on repeat. That song is my jam!

Lots of people are mentioning Nirvana, but I checked out the Pixies because Blur used to talk about them a lot too! Possible girl connection? *shrug* They have catchy songs, we like catchy songs.

xp - well, not only that, but i also think it's a certain age of person (at least in my case with my friends, see also example above)
i went to high school 89-93 -- in the beginning the 80s were still happening and by the end everyone -- eeeeveryone, not just the weirdos -- was playing nirvana at their graduation bonfires and whatnot
different times. my friends who liked pixies were identifying as not-casual-nirvana people too.

They have catchy songs and KIM DEAL who is awesome.

And I reached them by going "hey I like Belly, I should check out this Breeders band" / "hey I like the Breeders, I should check out this Pixies band", which I guess is a pretty girl-friendly route for those of us catching up after the event, too.

I mean I sort of want to be all "can't girls just like bands too w/o it being a thing which needs special underlining and explanation" but on the other hand I do admit that sometimes it seems more unusual than maybe it should

(paragraph of inept sociology on this point removed on realising it was half nonsense and half tautology)

xp see LL, that's part of it; I knew LOTS of not-casual-Nirvana fans (tho most of them were metalheads)

never knew any girls into the Pixies until I got to college (ie after they broke up). got Doolittle when it came out, worked backwards from there. Didn't really like Bossanova apart from a couple songs, and never listened to Trompe Le Monde. nowadays... it's weird, I enjoy their stuff when I hear it but I am never really in the mood for it, I don't put it on. They were fun but they were not emotionally engaging really, definitely very heavy on the irony.

Feel like I have more of an attachment to the Breeder's Last Splash tbh - Black Francis' writing seems very opaque and gimmicky, very much a constructed "act" that doesn't require any emotional engagement.

^ OTM, except I'd replace Last Splash with Pod.

i don't know whether it's totally my own imagination, but i identified heavily w/ a lot of black francis' songs because they seemed to capture a distinctly southern california experience, which is where i grew up. which i know is weird -- they're thought of as a boston band, i guess. but he grew up out there and there are some tunes that just *sound* like socal to me.

I can see that (surfers + pollution = yep that's socal all right!) but there's sort of nothing there to identify with...? like there's no emotional content to Black Francis' writing, his songs have this odd POV that is bereft of thoughts and feelings and is more just a surrealist cascade of imagery. it's like he's more of a medium than a human being.

Do you have a similar problem with poetry, Shakey?

There is definitely a fondness for schlocky B-movie sci-fi and horror imagery that runs through those Black Francis lyrics. At the time, it seemed like a cool, absurdist gesture - but it's also kind of emotionally cold. Even when imitating the Pixies, Kurt Cobain wasn't capable of being as emotionally distant as Black Francis, which is partly why Nirvana lyrics seem more meaningful to me now, even though they traffic in similar kinds of absurd imagery.

yeah, i mean, he's definitely not a "confessional" writer, but there's an overarching persona that i can vibe with. or at least i did as a teen. "i live cement, i hate this street!"

I think their emotional content is p radical--they might be darker than Nirvana--but I think it's heavily refracted through surrealism, and only sometimes through irony.

I mean, these are fun and catchy songs but their main engine is an aggressive negativity esp. towards the self, so I can see how that approaches irony but not the usual sense of the word...

I don't see how you can listen to the delivery of Pixies lyrics and find them emotionally distant, personally.

to bring it back to nirvana v. pixies, i related a lot more to the b-movie absurdist schtick than the angst-o of nirvana (tho i know they had their own sense of humor). but that may have just been the kind of kid i was.

Do you have a similar problem with poetry, Shakey?

I don't see this as a problem per se...? Different works are engaged in different ways and that's fine, I'm just saying that I can engage with the Pixies on some levels (hooks, a great guitar sound, silliness/absurdism, childlike fascination with transgression) but not on others (emotionally, for ex.) This is not a value judgment. I do think it explains why their music doesn't resonate with me on a nostalgic level like some of the other music from this period (Smashing Pumpkins first two, Nirvana, etc.), because I didn't engage it in that way, there was nothing there for me to invest any emotion in.

I don't see what poetry has to do with this, really. I like some poetry. Cortazar, for ex.

I mean, I listen to the acoustic demo of "Break My Body" on Frank Black Francis and it sounds like the lament of somebody dying painfully of lust. And I mean that's there in the lyrics but BF expresses it through dissociated images raher than head-on. But I mean there's an almost operatic intensity...

their main engine is an aggressive negativity esp. towards the self,

yeah the only emotional underpinning I can detect in most Pixies stuff is one of self-loathing. But even there it's diffused and distant - Where is My Mind, for ex. literally references being dislocated from one's own thoughts/body/mind.

xp

A lot of poetry is built around using allusion and impressionistic phrases to build images rather than straightforward narrative, like a lot of Pixies lyrics. I was wondering if you make emotional connections via straightforward narrative rather than oblique impressionism.

I dunno if I could draw that conclusion, the media are so different - I feel like reading and music engage completely different parts of my brain, if that makes any sense

I can dig that, I was mostly just curious. To me, pretty much every Pixies song up through Doolittle is a variation on a visceral punch to the face so I don't really understand how one could feel distant from them. (Latter material is just as emotive to me, I just don't like it as much.)

taaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaame

the day is like a warm night
salt rusts the cold line

Just as I think Albini gets a little too much credit for "Surfer Rosa," I think Gil Norton gets too little credit for shaping those later albums into an illusion of order amidst all the jagged chaos.

I don't see how you can listen to the delivery of Pixies lyrics and find them emotionally distant, personally

There is emotional intensity there, but it doesn't seem to be connected in any rational way to the content of the lyrics. When Francis shrieks and hollers, it's like watching some Appalachian, snake-handling Holy Roller - there's an emotional intensity, but it's hard to relate to.

To indulge in some armchair psychoanalysis, based on suggestive Wikipedia details, I think maybe the "Rosebud" key to Francis's lyrics is his need to internally reconcile the bar-owner father and the holy-roller stepfather. In many of these songs, Francis seems to be acting out some bizarro-world version of an apocalyptic prophet whose crazy rantings conceal secrets of impending doom.

It's barely a secret in some of those songs!

I can see that (surfers + pollution = yep that's socal all right!)

forgot to throw in Francis' semi-frequent interjections of Spanish, which also fit here. always struck me as an odd thing for someone from Boston to do

I believe the epiphany to form the Pixies came when he was spending a semester in Puerto Rico?

isla de encanta

I've never been able to connect with Pixies. I feel this as both a lack and a shortcoming.