Vinyl Diaries IV: Pixies (Part One)

Oh haloed monkey, what hours of joy you presage. Your hollow eyes would disturb if I look into them too long, but I move along to spoonfuls of hair nestled on a bare torso, frayed rope and a fresh heart, upturned crabs and detached soles. Lost shoes, broken chains and a bell (for whom does it toll? The dentist it seems) intervene, but this heavenly monkey is back. Man is  5, the devil takes the 6 and we reserve for God a 7. The monkey has rejoined him it seems.

I begin with a confession: Pixies were not my first true love. Before they captured my swooning heart there was a tipsy flirtation with the Violent Femmes, a smouldering dalliance with Nirvana, a sweet summer spent with Sonic Youth and a torrid and bruising encounter with Janes Addiction.
 
Then, of course, there was and remains my perennial crush on The Cure - Robert Smith tapping into my love of the literary and a perfect soulmate to my melancholy teen heart. This one still smokes and no doubt you'll hear more about it after a red wine or gin too many one late night. But for now another love shines more brightly than the rest, for I am three sleeps away from spending my first ever night with Pixies in the flesh, the first of my two Pixies shows.
 
Oh Pixies, you noisy, patchy, ragtag bunch of loveable misfits. Your place in my heart is forever secure. A streaking comet of unbridled energy, you made it all seem so simple; but such is the way of the genius at work.
 
I still vividly recall hearing Doolittle for the very first time. I was 14, enjoying a Saturday night come Sunday morning in ways no 14-year-old child of mine ever will.
 
Doolittle was nothing short of a revelation - a revolutionary one at that. The first 24 seconds that served as my Pixies introduction are the most succinct encapulation of the band imaginable, with the joyous perfection of 'Debaser' providing a potent portent of their short-lived blaze.

Four quickfire bars of Kim Deal's disarmingly straightforward four note bass riff, four bars of two spikily fuzzy chords - David Lovering's marching-drumbeat kicking in on the fourth - the next eight introducing the skeleton of Joey Santiago's riff... and then Black Francis slicing up eyeballs and summoning a girlie so groovie - what more could you possibly ask?
 
Inspired, seemingly, by the Buñuel/Dalí surreal film masterpiece Un Chien Andalou, it's an early hint as to the free association style Francis' lyrical stream would follow. The surreal imagery of Simon Larbalestier and Vaughan Oliver that adorns the Pixies album Doolittle (and covered in the introduction above) is a fitting visual match for the skewed world into which we have been launched.

 'Tame' introduces that trademark primal scream that would reappear over and over, with Kim's cheerleader sweet voice settling in underneath. It's a perfect example of the schizophrenic duality that came to define the Pixies sound. These days the loud/quite dynamic of gentle verses and explosive choruses seem entirely ordinary, but in 1989 this was far from the case.

The mermaid kissing 'Wave of Mutilation' brings in other Pixies tropes in its harmonious lyricism and wash of surf guitar, although these are hidden in fuzzy reverb and difficult to pick as such.
 
'I Bleed' layers messily, before a box car waiting can only mean one thing - 'Here Comes Your Man'. The first bass line I ever learnt, it's a strange beast and a throwback in a way to an almost '50s sound; similar to that which Weezer trotted out with 'Buddy Holly' some years later.
 
'Dead' is a right royal mess, and beautifully so. 'This Monkey's Gone To Heaven' (my second bass line... sensing a theme?) is harmoniously delicious, with Francis getting all Al Gore on us with the world frankly going to Helena Handbasket. He's not making a lot of sense with his numbering schemes and all, but we get the gist.

Amidst all that noise the hardy explorer can find example after example of the perfect pop song. Perversely, it's been tarnished beyond recognition - written to perfection, then destroyed beyond belief.
 
Anyway, I have digressed a little. This isn't about Doolittle per se, as seminal a sophomore album as it is. We're now 18 years on (I wish my maths was out, but I'm afraid it's true) and it can be difficult to contextualise the dire musical landscape from which Pixies helped us escape.
 
Let's cast our eye, then, around 1989.
 
The charts are awash in middle-of-the-road tosh - perhaps not a lot different to now, but a fairly depressing grab-bag of goodies:
Phil Collins gave as " Another Day in Paradise ", New Kids On The Block were " Hangin' Tough", Cher was wishing if only " If I Could Turn Back Time". Belinda Carlisle suggested we "Leave a Light On" and countless numbers did, Roxette had " The Look".
 
Meanwhile, thank god, some of the darker influences of the latter part of the decade were finally coalescing. On one side of the Atlantic, Madchseter was about to hits its straps and spread its wings beyond The Hacienda Club, spawning an Acid House revolution. The Cure's watershed Disintegration was released and there were even some strange noises coming out of Iceland with Björk & The Sugarcubes releasing Here Today, Tomorrow, Next Week!.
 
In the US there was no central scene exploding as Seattle soon would, but there was a burbling to the surface from almost every corner.
The Beastie Boys released the seminal cut-up Paul's Boutique, while on the other coast Jane's Addiction's Nothing Shocking was telling fibs and the Red Hot Chili Peppers were funking about with Mother's Milk. 
 
REM was about the closest anything came to a cross-over from college radio to the world beyond, particularly with the attention "Orange Crush" was receiving. Nirvana were to release their debut Bleach, but this wasn't to garner anywhere near the the attention reserved two years later for Nevermind.

In the middle of all of this was the breakthrough release from Pixies. As rock mythology had it, University of Massachusetts room-mates Joey Santiago and Charles Michael Kittridge Thompson IV had pinned up a poster seeking a bass player for a band influenced by Husker Dü and Peter, Paul & Mary. Kim Deal was the only one to answer the ad.
 
The rest, as they say, is rock history. The influence Pixies had throught the '90s cannot be measured by the relatively modest sales of their albums. A band's band, their chemistry is almost impossible to make sense of by distilling into mere elements.

Kurt Cobain was sure he would get 'nailed' for the fact that 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' "sounds like the Pixies", but it was something many were to forgive as Nirvana's sound, channeling the pure raw energy and trashed pop hooks the Pixies had already made their own, came to define the first half of the 1990s.

I haven't got very far have I? But that's enough for now, there might be more later... in three sleeps' time.