6 keepers
.462 keeper avg
Pixies first full-length (kinda) album continues the consistent high quality of preceding "Come On Pilgrim" mini-album (1987), and contains several of the band's all-time best tracks. Dave Lovering's driving, downbeat-less cadence opens "Bone Machine"****, an appropriately named monster of a song; Joey Santiago cranks a piercing, angular riff and Black Francis yelps and howls, to be countered by Kim Deal's sweetly melodic refrain. The similarly named "Break My Body" is an even more aggressive collection of jarringly angular riffs barely held together by a chorus.
Like the previous album, a fair amount of "Surfer Rosa" is at punk tempo, including "Broken Face"****, "Tony's Theme"****, "Oh My Golly!"****, and I'm Amazed. Most are on side 2, and when they're short, sweet, and a little silly it doesn't get any better. "Surfer Rosa" follows the template of the previous album so closely that two songs were borrowed from it: "Something Against You" is an only slightly (mostly-instrumental) reworking of the classic "The Holiday Song" and "Vamos" was just re-recorded and included again.
On the debut album Pixies also developed the soft-loud-soft and fast-slow dynamics that would influence Nirvana and consequently countless others. But Come On Pilgrim's lead-off track "Caribou" shows Pixies's true path to success, the inimitable dichotomy of the Deal / Francis vocal tag-team, an ingredient which makes classic tracks such as "Bone Machine", "Where Is My Mind?"****, and Kim Deal's "Gigantic"**** so enduring. The remaining mid-tempo tracks , "River Euphrates", "Cactus", "Brick Is Red", aren't particularly fun or interesting ("River Euphrates" is ok except for Deal's off-key yodeling) but a fair amount of the album is still essential Pixies.
Comments