Pixies, little fairy like things that have always made me laugh, I don’t know why, maybe growing up in a family where nearly every single one of your cousins etc. are female may have been a factor…
Or maybe it’s just me thinking of a certain book character losing control of them in a certain book
When I turned 14, my uncle bought me 4 CDs for my birthday, one of them was Radiohead, one was a Paul Weller CD, one was a foo fighters CD and the other CD? The other CD was this CD. When I got to this I was thinking “these guys had hits?!!”, I had already heard monkey gone to heaven but the rest of this CD was stuff I had never heard, and the funny thing is, this was the only one that I didn’t listen to all the way through on the day. So isn’t it ironic then, that this very disc, this circle of auditory bliss, is the only one of those 4 albums that I still have the original disc of?
It isn’t, because the disc goes through so many musical styles, all the while, retaining its Indie touch. Whether it be
Winterlong or
Caribou, th album has a little bit of everything.
So here is the formula for the defining indie band:
You take a vocalist who can switch styles with the greatest of ease. I am of course talking about Francis Black, whose vocal diversity is shown to its best in this compilation. Whether it be getting his voice up to a ridiculously high pitch in the punkesque
Broken Face , to his screaming in the choruses of the much heavier
Tame. his vocals really do make the Pixies what they are
Then, you throw a lead guitarist into the mix. The guitarist in this particular formula is the brilliant Joey Santiago. The guitar virtuosity is one of the Pixies particular strong points. It is really highlighted in 3 tracks in particular;
Velouria has a simple, but incredibly catchy riff throughout the song. The second of these tracks is
Vamos, which has a 2 minute long instrumental( and some screams from Frank), which is completely dominated by Joey. The last of the 3 tracks that are really Joey’s tracks is
Where Is My Mind, where his riff is essentially, otherworldly, basic, but it sounds like it should be in a song heard in a graveyard. And the part at the end of the song where he just stops to let you hear what can only be described as ethereal howls, is great.
After this, you get a drummer. David Lovering is the man on the kit, and boy does he do what he does well. His drumming is solid throughout their career but in my opinion, the 2 best tracks on this album drum-wise are
Wave of mutilation, in which he shows his skill on the kit quite well and
Vamos for his simple, effective and addictive drumbeat throughout the song, especially in the long instrumental piece of the song.
To finish off the band, you need a bassist, right? Well the bass playing falls to Kim Deal and what a choice in bassist, not to mention 2nd vocalist and backing vocals for Frank.
Her riff in
Tame is very catchy but her real strong point is her vocals.
Into the White sums up my point here extremely well, a very solid vocalist as well as bassist, the best track on this album are the ones that she contributes to more than backing vocals. Take, for example,
Gigantic, if Frank were to sing that it would fall flat on it’s face.
Winterlong, the ballad which closes the compilation, shows the qualities in both Kim and Frank’s vocals extremely well.
So, there you go, arguably one of the most influential bands to ever grace this green earth with their music, putting out a genre-hopping, career-spanning, compilation album. One that I would seriously recommend to anyone who wants to get a bit more from the Pixies than Monkey gone to heaven
4.5/5
