Post by Mighty Jack on Feb 28, 2015 4:07:12 GMT -5
My 15 Favorite Pixies Songs
Just because, it's educational! Click titles to hear a track. warning, some lyrics NSFW and because I'm lazy, I'm going to frequently quote others, who say it better than I could anyway.
#1. Velouria
I tend to gravitate more towards the melodic, hook laden Pixie songs, rather than their jagged grungy stuff. So it's no surprise I'm drawn to this song, my all time favorite from the band. Velouria comes from their sci-fi laced "Bossanova" album, and everything works on this thing, from the hint of Thereamin to Joey Santiago’s clanging lead guitar riff to Kim's ghostly girlish background vocals. I love the drama in the music and Frank's voice, it's very stirring, gets me jacked up. I also like that the guitars carry a taste of the Beatles "Hold Me Tight" at the end. Lyrically it's about a hippy girl who can time travel... I think. With Black Francis you never can tell for sure.
#2. Gigantic
This is a hook lovers dream. From Rolling Stone: On "Gigantic," Kim Deal proved her songwriting instincts were every bit as bizarre and subversive as Black Francis'. The song began as a Black Francis riff, but he had nothing beyond the word "gigantic." He asked Kim if she wanted to complete it, and that night, she sat down with her husband John Murphy and wrote a song about a white woman watching a black man have sex. (Use your imagination as to what "gigantic" refers to.) Her inspiration was largely the 1986 Sissy Spacek movie Crimes of the Heart. It's one of the only Pixies songs that Deal sings, and it always makes the crowd go completely insane.
#3. Hey
It's the Pixies going all funky and bluesy. I love the vocal handoffs on the "Chained" chorus. From Popmatters: It’s hard to describe “Hey” because it’s a song without any real direct descendants or antecedents. There’s really only one long verse that gets interrupted by a chorus as well as what would normally be called a guitar solo, only here it’s more akin to a six-stringed lead vocal part. However you classify it, it’s a master’s course in creating tension and twisting song dynamics. This is the apogee of Frank Black’s debauched songwriting period as he yelps, grunts, and occasionally sings his way through a tale of missed connections and, of course, whores. Lots of whores. Kim Deal’s bass matches his spare guitarwork note-for-note while her backing vocals on the chorus, as always, give the lyrics color and depth that Black alone couldn’t muster. But it’s Joey Santiago who really takes things to the next level. Throughout the verses, his daringly simple leads and bent notes give the song expressive texture, but it’s the guitar break in the middle where he steps into the spotlight and makes it feel like his instrument is singing without words. “Hey” feels like a delicate tightrope walk where everything has to fall exactly into place just so, and when you get to the end and see that they’ve made it, the tension releases and you’re all the more impressed.
#4. Where Is My Mind
People who didn't even know the Pixies, knew this song because of the movie Fight Club. Director David Fincher certainly picked a memorable tune. This is one of the bands more dreamy productions, it leans on the wistful than the rough and tumble. The acoustic rhythm guitar is predominate (a characteristic of several tunes for the group) and takes you on a nice stroll. Wistful also describes Joey's lead riffs, while Kim's backing vocals (recorded in a bathroom) are haunting. Lyrically, it's about SCUBA-diving.
#5. Planet of Sound
The Pixies final album Trompe Le Monde is an underrated classic IMHO, even though Kim didn't have a lot to do with it. The instrumentation is tighter than ever, the production is fuller... it kicks your ass. And nothing kicked harder than this scorching rocker. Man does it ever cook! Santiago's blues tinged lead, and Frank's hard edged vocals (filtered through a phaser effect) are the highlights of this short, but sweet number.
#6. Alec Eiffel
Colorful and fun song that drives on a steady beat and ends on a psychedelic circus of sound, which includes a zither. I rarely hear people talk about this tune. It is never listed in other folks top 10s, but it's one of my favorites. Alec follows "Planet of Sound" on "Trompe Le Monde", so you get a double up-tempo kick in the pants.
7. Allison
This short, minute and 15 second tune follows Velouria on "Bossanova" and is a tribute to the American jazz pianist and vocalist Mose Allison. This is another I never hear folks rave about, but it a quick pop pleasure that never fails to get my blood pumping.
#8. Monkey Gone to Heaven
Melodic, dreamy, with cello and violins that add a sweeping power to the piece. From Rolling Stone: It started with a single line: "This monkey's gone to heaven." Black Francis didn't quite know what to do with it, but he knew it was attention-grabbing. Eventually, he wrote some lyrics about the destruction of the environment, and he tossed in some cryptic references to Hebrew numerology on top of it. Don't strain yourself too hard trying to find a connection between all these things, because it isn't there – even though it stands to reason that the destruction of the environment will lead to dead monkeys and many people turning towards the Torah for hope and salvation.
#9. Cactus
From Rolling Stone: Black Francis tackled topics that few songwriters dared to go anywhere near, including incest, mutilation, Hebrew numerology, STDs, alien abduction and sexual perversion. "Cactus" is about a guy in prison asking his girlfriend to "bloody your hand on a cactus tree/ Wipe it on a dress and send it to me." Oddly enough, it's one of the sweeter tunes on Surfer Rosa and the closest thing they really had to a love song.
#10. Bone Machine
From Popmatters: “Bone Machine” kicked off Surfer Rosa by announcing to the world that Steve Albini had arrived to make the Pixies sound somehow even more brutal. Albini makes David Lovering’s thundering backwards drumbeat sound absolutely cavernous and Kim Deal’s bassline grab you with even more dark seductiveness than anything heard on Come On Pilgrim before the metal-picked guitars start lacerating the mix on both sides. “Bone Machine” was a new kind of sonic assault for the Pixies, but what makes it so appealing is that the brutal noise hides some of Frank Blacks most nonsensical and hilarious lyrics. “This is a song for Carol” he throws out at the beginning, the first in a string of non sequiturs—“I was talking to peachy-peach about kissy-kiss”, “You’re so pretty when your unfaithful to me”, “Our love is rice and beans and horses lard”: the mixture of anger, self-loathing and playfulness in these phrases is hard to find anywhere else in alternative rock. Only Nixon could go to China, and only the Pixies could have recorded “Bone Machine”.
#11. I Bleed
One of P.J. Harvey's favorite songs, and one that left her in awe of Black Francis' writing. Wiki describes it as a quieter song, melodically simple, and formed around a single rhythmical repetition. Kim is an all-star here with her melodic bass phrases and haunting backing vocals. Joey's lead guitar is a twisting squeal of pain, the drums jazzy. One of Doolittle's highlights.
#12. Nimrod's Son
From Popmatters: Rhythm guitar isn’t generally an instrument that gets a lot of love but, as a Lou Reed fan, Frank Black surely knows that it can make or break a song. A lot of early Pixies songs feature Black thrashing away on an acoustic guitar while Santiago’s leads run wild, giving the proceedings the feeling of unhinged, maniacal pop. None do this more effectively than “Nimrod’s Son”. As he rifles through guitar chords like they’re going out of style, Black bellows a first-person account of crashing his motorcycle only to be told by his own ghost, “You are the son of incestuous union”. The rest of the song is a blur of imagery that would land most people on a psychiatrist’s couch. Of course we know it’s all just a piss-take as Black ends every chorus with a bizarre chuckle of “The joke has come upon me”. No one feels cooler than the first time they’re let in on the joke—it means another Pixies fan has been born.
#13. Here Comes Your Man
I love the Pixes videos, they weren't even trying. Cracks me up. Jangly surf guitars, tight hook fueled vocals, this is more poppy than traditional Pixie tracks, but with its lyrics about hobo's having their heads crushed during an Earthquake (at least I think that's what it's about) it's still distinctly a Pixies song.
#14. Into The White
One of Kim's few lead vocals was found on this wonderful B-Side. Beatnik cool, with Frank's acoustic strumming countered by Joey's stabbing electric guitar.
#15. Is She Weird
From Pigeons and Planes: Bossanova was markedly less weird than the Pixies' earlier material. Thank God for "Is She Weird." Unlike the previous albums, Bossanova was thrown together quickly, and instead of rehearsals and practices, the band recorded many of the songs without much planning. Black Francis explained in Fool the World: The Oral History of a Band Called Pixies, "So I was writing [lyrics] on napkins five minutes before I sang. Sometimes it's good, sometimes not. That's just the nature of that songwriting."
"Is She Weird" feels like little pieces of a story that is too dark to fully tell. Is it about a prostitute? A goth girl? A goth prostitute? Whatever it's about, and however quickly it was thrown together, it's one of the oddest, sharpest tracks on Bossanova.
That leaves a lot off, critical favs like Gouge Away, Wave of Mutilation, Debaser, U-Mass and Vamos, to name a few
Just because, it's educational! Click titles to hear a track. warning, some lyrics NSFW and because I'm lazy, I'm going to frequently quote others, who say it better than I could anyway.
#1. Velouria
I tend to gravitate more towards the melodic, hook laden Pixie songs, rather than their jagged grungy stuff. So it's no surprise I'm drawn to this song, my all time favorite from the band. Velouria comes from their sci-fi laced "Bossanova" album, and everything works on this thing, from the hint of Thereamin to Joey Santiago’s clanging lead guitar riff to Kim's ghostly girlish background vocals. I love the drama in the music and Frank's voice, it's very stirring, gets me jacked up. I also like that the guitars carry a taste of the Beatles "Hold Me Tight" at the end. Lyrically it's about a hippy girl who can time travel... I think. With Black Francis you never can tell for sure.
#2. Gigantic
This is a hook lovers dream. From Rolling Stone: On "Gigantic," Kim Deal proved her songwriting instincts were every bit as bizarre and subversive as Black Francis'. The song began as a Black Francis riff, but he had nothing beyond the word "gigantic." He asked Kim if she wanted to complete it, and that night, she sat down with her husband John Murphy and wrote a song about a white woman watching a black man have sex. (Use your imagination as to what "gigantic" refers to.) Her inspiration was largely the 1986 Sissy Spacek movie Crimes of the Heart. It's one of the only Pixies songs that Deal sings, and it always makes the crowd go completely insane.
#3. Hey
It's the Pixies going all funky and bluesy. I love the vocal handoffs on the "Chained" chorus. From Popmatters: It’s hard to describe “Hey” because it’s a song without any real direct descendants or antecedents. There’s really only one long verse that gets interrupted by a chorus as well as what would normally be called a guitar solo, only here it’s more akin to a six-stringed lead vocal part. However you classify it, it’s a master’s course in creating tension and twisting song dynamics. This is the apogee of Frank Black’s debauched songwriting period as he yelps, grunts, and occasionally sings his way through a tale of missed connections and, of course, whores. Lots of whores. Kim Deal’s bass matches his spare guitarwork note-for-note while her backing vocals on the chorus, as always, give the lyrics color and depth that Black alone couldn’t muster. But it’s Joey Santiago who really takes things to the next level. Throughout the verses, his daringly simple leads and bent notes give the song expressive texture, but it’s the guitar break in the middle where he steps into the spotlight and makes it feel like his instrument is singing without words. “Hey” feels like a delicate tightrope walk where everything has to fall exactly into place just so, and when you get to the end and see that they’ve made it, the tension releases and you’re all the more impressed.
#4. Where Is My Mind
People who didn't even know the Pixies, knew this song because of the movie Fight Club. Director David Fincher certainly picked a memorable tune. This is one of the bands more dreamy productions, it leans on the wistful than the rough and tumble. The acoustic rhythm guitar is predominate (a characteristic of several tunes for the group) and takes you on a nice stroll. Wistful also describes Joey's lead riffs, while Kim's backing vocals (recorded in a bathroom) are haunting. Lyrically, it's about SCUBA-diving.
#5. Planet of Sound
The Pixies final album Trompe Le Monde is an underrated classic IMHO, even though Kim didn't have a lot to do with it. The instrumentation is tighter than ever, the production is fuller... it kicks your ass. And nothing kicked harder than this scorching rocker. Man does it ever cook! Santiago's blues tinged lead, and Frank's hard edged vocals (filtered through a phaser effect) are the highlights of this short, but sweet number.
#6. Alec Eiffel
Colorful and fun song that drives on a steady beat and ends on a psychedelic circus of sound, which includes a zither. I rarely hear people talk about this tune. It is never listed in other folks top 10s, but it's one of my favorites. Alec follows "Planet of Sound" on "Trompe Le Monde", so you get a double up-tempo kick in the pants.
7. Allison
This short, minute and 15 second tune follows Velouria on "Bossanova" and is a tribute to the American jazz pianist and vocalist Mose Allison. This is another I never hear folks rave about, but it a quick pop pleasure that never fails to get my blood pumping.
#8. Monkey Gone to Heaven
Melodic, dreamy, with cello and violins that add a sweeping power to the piece. From Rolling Stone: It started with a single line: "This monkey's gone to heaven." Black Francis didn't quite know what to do with it, but he knew it was attention-grabbing. Eventually, he wrote some lyrics about the destruction of the environment, and he tossed in some cryptic references to Hebrew numerology on top of it. Don't strain yourself too hard trying to find a connection between all these things, because it isn't there – even though it stands to reason that the destruction of the environment will lead to dead monkeys and many people turning towards the Torah for hope and salvation.
#9. Cactus
From Rolling Stone: Black Francis tackled topics that few songwriters dared to go anywhere near, including incest, mutilation, Hebrew numerology, STDs, alien abduction and sexual perversion. "Cactus" is about a guy in prison asking his girlfriend to "bloody your hand on a cactus tree/ Wipe it on a dress and send it to me." Oddly enough, it's one of the sweeter tunes on Surfer Rosa and the closest thing they really had to a love song.
#10. Bone Machine
From Popmatters: “Bone Machine” kicked off Surfer Rosa by announcing to the world that Steve Albini had arrived to make the Pixies sound somehow even more brutal. Albini makes David Lovering’s thundering backwards drumbeat sound absolutely cavernous and Kim Deal’s bassline grab you with even more dark seductiveness than anything heard on Come On Pilgrim before the metal-picked guitars start lacerating the mix on both sides. “Bone Machine” was a new kind of sonic assault for the Pixies, but what makes it so appealing is that the brutal noise hides some of Frank Blacks most nonsensical and hilarious lyrics. “This is a song for Carol” he throws out at the beginning, the first in a string of non sequiturs—“I was talking to peachy-peach about kissy-kiss”, “You’re so pretty when your unfaithful to me”, “Our love is rice and beans and horses lard”: the mixture of anger, self-loathing and playfulness in these phrases is hard to find anywhere else in alternative rock. Only Nixon could go to China, and only the Pixies could have recorded “Bone Machine”.
#11. I Bleed
One of P.J. Harvey's favorite songs, and one that left her in awe of Black Francis' writing. Wiki describes it as a quieter song, melodically simple, and formed around a single rhythmical repetition. Kim is an all-star here with her melodic bass phrases and haunting backing vocals. Joey's lead guitar is a twisting squeal of pain, the drums jazzy. One of Doolittle's highlights.
#12. Nimrod's Son
From Popmatters: Rhythm guitar isn’t generally an instrument that gets a lot of love but, as a Lou Reed fan, Frank Black surely knows that it can make or break a song. A lot of early Pixies songs feature Black thrashing away on an acoustic guitar while Santiago’s leads run wild, giving the proceedings the feeling of unhinged, maniacal pop. None do this more effectively than “Nimrod’s Son”. As he rifles through guitar chords like they’re going out of style, Black bellows a first-person account of crashing his motorcycle only to be told by his own ghost, “You are the son of incestuous union”. The rest of the song is a blur of imagery that would land most people on a psychiatrist’s couch. Of course we know it’s all just a piss-take as Black ends every chorus with a bizarre chuckle of “The joke has come upon me”. No one feels cooler than the first time they’re let in on the joke—it means another Pixies fan has been born.
#13. Here Comes Your Man
I love the Pixes videos, they weren't even trying. Cracks me up. Jangly surf guitars, tight hook fueled vocals, this is more poppy than traditional Pixie tracks, but with its lyrics about hobo's having their heads crushed during an Earthquake (at least I think that's what it's about) it's still distinctly a Pixies song.
#14. Into The White
One of Kim's few lead vocals was found on this wonderful B-Side. Beatnik cool, with Frank's acoustic strumming countered by Joey's stabbing electric guitar.
#15. Is She Weird
From Pigeons and Planes: Bossanova was markedly less weird than the Pixies' earlier material. Thank God for "Is She Weird." Unlike the previous albums, Bossanova was thrown together quickly, and instead of rehearsals and practices, the band recorded many of the songs without much planning. Black Francis explained in Fool the World: The Oral History of a Band Called Pixies, "So I was writing [lyrics] on napkins five minutes before I sang. Sometimes it's good, sometimes not. That's just the nature of that songwriting."
"Is She Weird" feels like little pieces of a story that is too dark to fully tell. Is it about a prostitute? A goth girl? A goth prostitute? Whatever it's about, and however quickly it was thrown together, it's one of the oddest, sharpest tracks on Bossanova.
That leaves a lot off, critical favs like Gouge Away, Wave of Mutilation, Debaser, U-Mass and Vamos, to name a few