Doolittle - DOO Listen - it's their best (Doolittle - Pixies)

Name: cswann

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Product:	Doolittle - Pixies
Date:	10.11.00 (151 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Brilliant grunge-y power pop

Disadvantages: Just that they've split up...

It all starts fairly quietly with Kim Deal's bassline, but very soon the powerful guitars crash in, and you're away - explosive music from the near-legendary Pixies.
This first track, "Debaser", is typical of their energised music, and this song in particular takes my breath away. It's clearly about cult film "La chien andalu" (mentioned pretty well by name - as "La chien Andalusia" anyway - no difficult allusions here) and the song seems to be from the point of view of someone who gets off on this kind of thing, glorifying the "slicing up eyeballs". Black Francis (as he was still known at this point - he later became Frank Black, of course) on vocals is very distinctive - screaming in a tortured, 'indie', kind of way (definitely not in a heavy metal kind of way!), if you get what I mean.
On a song like "Tame" (as featured on the recent Smirnoff advertisement), he can go from whispering the lyrics to absolutely screaming them.
I know that from this description it sounds as though it could be a terrible noise, and I do admit that listening to the Pixies isn't always an easy experience, but it is, I think, an exhilarating one, and yes, very enjoyable.
I'm so familiar with this album that it's hard to think of it as something other than a set of songs that I sing and hum along to. I can imagine that some listeners might find parts of to be an assault on the ears.
But, well? just concentrate on those gorgeous bass lines, (and Kim Deal's backing vocals too), and try listening to the catchy melodies of "Here comes your man" and "Gouge away", then maybe try "Wave of mutilation", with it's power guitar chords.
"Here comes your man" has many REM-like qualities, and there are many tracks which bring Nirvana to mind. (Nirvana admitted that "Smells like teen spirit was a blatant rip off of the Pixies' sound) <
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The song on here which still, even now, stops me dead is "Monkey gone to heaven", a completely pessimistic song where Black's menacing vocal, and the screaming, seem perfectly justified. My favourite bit is when he sings(?) "then God is 7 then God is 7 then God is 7", and the seering guitar from Joey Santiago adds the finishing touch. How can such a song, about the complete mess the human race has made of the planet and how we're all doomed, be so uplifting to listen to?

All of the Pixies' albums are great, but "Debaser" is, in my opinion, their most satisfying album, and the best.

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