**'Talking sweet about nothing...'** Pop music, rock music, call it/them what you will...it's a young artform, in more ways than one. It's a rule-deficient battleground symbolising the eternal struggle between The Kids (TM) and The Man (TM) where one of the very few binding edicts can be summed up thus: The music loved by the current generation must (largely) be absolutely hated by the previous one. This is a law that history has largely obeyed: witness how the prog rockers despised the punk/new wavers who in turn loathed the New Romantics (if they weren't the sort of punks who'd sensibly hitched themselves to the latter's ostentatiously ...  Read the complete review

Waves of mutilation... Hating blue-eyed chicks... Wanting to die... Being the son of a motherf**ker... Wishing there was no television... (and my favourite)... Wanting your girlfriend to send her wet dress into your prison cell... Welcome to the strange, deranged mind of Frank Black (or Black Francis as he was known back then), front man of the now defunct cult group, The Pixies who fizzled out (arguably) at the peak of their powers. Their impact on music in the following decade since their 1992 split was massive. More so that any band since, Led Zeppelin or The Beatles, The Pixies really did attack the music ...  Read the complete review

After witnessing their stunning headlining set at this years Carling Leeds Festival I felt I had to have more albums by alternative rock legends the Pixies. The album I plumped for was 1989s Doolittle. Whilst I had heard very good things about this album I doubted it would come close to the brilliance of the wonderful Surfer Rosa LP. I was wrong. Throughout their career the Pixies are a band whos members mixed infamously badly. Whilst this does seem to have adversely affected their last two albums and ultimately lead to their demise (they're now re-formed) it has not led to any audible problems on this third album, Doolittle. In fact the Pixies unique yet ...  Read the complete review

The album Doolittle was released in 1989 and was the third album from the band and in my opinion was the best album that the band produced before infighting saw them pretty much disappear from the musicbuying publics awareness. I love the unusual vocals from lead singer Frank Black whether it is the gentle songs or the full on wailing ones it is a powerful voice indeed and rather unique. Primarily I have always considered them a grunge band and certainly they had an influence on Nirvana and other bands in the genre and this is a strong album with some great tunes. Debaser is the opening track and is one of their most influential songs and ...  Read the complete review

'Doolittle' represents the pinnacle of the Pixie canon; as good as the albums that followed this were, neither of them lived up to the above-and-beyond criticism standard set by this. There's not much to choose between this and its predecessor; whereas 'Surfer Rosa' was a teeth-bared, vicious, nasty piece of brilliantly noisy grit, 'Doolittle' is polished with a studio-pop sheen that lends a new dynamic to the songs; no less terrifying, but more spectacular. Take 'Debaser', for example; a bassline of pure melody starts, before chiming guitars and urgent, up-front drums crash in and burn through ...  Read the complete review