You are the winner of the Tobias and Tanya, 2017 Album of the Month Club. Well done!
This means you will receive a seminal Rock and Roll album handpicked by Tobias and Tanya at the first of each month throughout 2017. These albums will be accompanied by a personal introduction and additional reviews and promotional materials. Conditions apply.
*Conditions: the recipient of the aforementioned T & T album of the month must crank each album up to maximum volume.
The Pixies-Doolittle (1989)
For me, this album is a classic because at the time, in the late 1980's, it was something completely different. And more often than not, albums that make you sit up and notice them do just this: they work against the grain. I was in Connecticut during that hot, dull and steamy summer. I was working at the fish market near our house on Old Road. Not a bad job, if you didn't mind the smell of fish permanently ingrained in your skin. Summers can be great for a young person but they can also be a bit dreary and anxiety inducing. Questions may begin to gnaw away at you: when will my life begin? What will my future hold! Anyway, Connecticut at that time seemed to be permanently stuck in Grateful Dead and classic rock nostalgia. Running parallel with this, the new wave thing, bands like the Talking Heads, Blondie, the Police were starting to get a bit played out. Like I say, it was oppressive summer in many different ways. The heat and humidity. My parents weren't doing so good relationship-wise. I felt like I was stuck half way between high school and whatever the future had in mind for me. Anyway, I bought this album on cassette from an independent record store downtown. I don't know why. Maybe it was recommended by someone? Maybe I just picked it out from the display? The cassette liner notes were totally mysterious to me. The spooky surrealist photographs, the fragmented type font and the anti-image of the band (no obligatory photographs of the band members posing in cool locations. And the lead singer was enigmatically named Black Francis?). I always go for the lyrics before I listen to an album. I'm a sucker for the little stories each song tells. And the lyrics for this album were strange. The kind of strange I personally like. Mixed up stuff about surrealist movies, the Bible, monsters in New Jersey, monkeys going to heaven, vampires and girls with tattoos. Old and contemporary images mixed together. I thought it was great. Ideally, lyrics should make you scratch your head and think 'what the.....!' Good lyrics leave plenty of room for interpretation.
Anyway, after the cassette comes out of the wrapping, it goes in the car cassette player, probably in a boom box I had laying around our house and most likely in one of the many old battery hungry Sony Walkmans I had during that period. The album had an immediate visceral power. An energy that shocked me out of that summer funk. It came barreling out of the speakers full tilt. This wasn't moaning synth new wave or 'baby, baby, baby' silly hair metal. This music had pain and passion. I continued listening to Doolittle when I went back to England. As such, I had this little piece of Americana constantly playing in my head while I drifted around London. Like any good album, it had stand out, stronger songs which were mixed in with the songs that offered a change of pace. Songs that gave you, the listener, a contrasting tone or flavour. Anyway, somehow all these songs worked together, adding up to a cohesively dark and moody little masterpiece of rock and roll. Like all good albums Doolittle was comprised of short, blistering tracks which required repeat listening. As such, I have listened to this album 100s of times since first buying it. I have never seen the Pixies live but I have seen Black Francis play in a small bar in San Francisco. That night he fronted up with his guitar and played a two-hour set. He covered many of the classic pixies songs and many of his own solo efforts. It was a great night. The bar was crammed with people probably well exceeding the fire regulations and everyone was singing along with Black Francis.
Things to keep in mind:
- The influence this album had on countless bands to follow.Very impressive.
- These guys were the prototypical grunge sound. The quiet sensitive bits followed by a loud, overload of sonic assault. A sound many bands would emulate in the 1990's. Kirk Cobain said of the Pixies, 'All we wanted to do with Nevermind was make an album which was as good as Doolittle'.
- Musical styles included Punk, Rock, Folk, Surf Music, Bossa Nova.
- Kim Deal counterbalancing Black Francis's yelps and howls with her droning but the melodic voice. This was a key element of the band's sound.
Music reviews:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/g9jw/
http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/19282-pixies-catalogue/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doolittle_(album)
http://www.billboard.com/articles/review/6062501/pixies-doolittle-at-25-classic-track-by-track-review
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