#315: Surfer Rosa- The Pixies

Listened to: MP3

Ah, The Pixies first album. Who are The Pixies, you ask? Only one of the most influential bands of the late 80’s. Influenced who, you ask? Well, Nirvana, The Smashing Pumpkins, and pretty much any alternative band thereafter. You don’t listen to “hipster” bands, you say? Ugh. Ok, are you a tool? Yes? Ok, then you know them as “that song at the end of “Fight Club”. Yeah, you liked that movie, right? ‘Cause it was cool how they hit each other, right? Ok, good. Now, the grown-ups are gonna discuss good music. Run along and get sterilized, now.

Surfer Rosa brought the world Black Francis’ song-writing, a blend of soft and loud, rock and pop, howling and whispering, kick-ass and…just kick-ass. The album opens on “Bone Machine”, and it’s a great feeling to just imagine what it was like putting the needle down on this record for the first time, before it was a classic. Hearing David Lovering’s pounding drums, Black Francis yelling and wailing, and hearing Kim Deal’s slightly off yet so perfect harmonies. Just listen to that almost cacophony that drops out for the calm “Your bone’s got a little machine”. This opened up a whole new world of song-writing, friends. Nothing would smell like teen anything were it not for songs like this. Track number 2, “Break My Body”, shows how perfectly Black could craft a simple pop song, and then decide to mask all that pop in distorted vocals and guitars, and do it so perfectly as to create something even better. This is rock and roll. This is violent, nasty, gritty, while still being indie, and unique, and breaking the molds just as it fills into them.

“Something Against You” is a frenetic free for all of guitar sounds. You have Sex Pistols punk meets Sublime upstrokes, while Francis’ vocals were recorded through a guitar amp, giving it that sick, growling, indecipherable sound. This, of course, was brilliant producer Steve Albini’s idea. You remember him from Rid Of Me, don’t you? “Broken Face” keeps the punk feel from the last track, but now goes for a bizarre, high pitched chorus, and the concern on the vocals is not so much to make notes as to make noise. Many bands try this and sound like shit, but The Pixies, under the guidance of Albini, make masterpieces.

“Gigantic” is the only song on the album not by Black Francis. It is written and sung by bassist Kim Deal, and due to this the song takes on a much more pop feel. Maybe it’s just because her vocals are cleaner than Francis’, but that doesn’t make the song any less great than any other on the album. The song repeats the same bass line, supposedly influenced by Lou Reed. It’s about a girl watching a black man have sex with another woman. You can guess why it’s called “Gigantic”. “River Euphrates” sounds very similar to the type of material that would appear on their next album, 1989’s Doolittle, but quite frankly, once you’ve heard this album a few times, “River Euphrates” is just 2:33 you kill before the next track, the most popular off of the album, and one of the tracks that even your most “mainstream” friends know by The Pixies.

Yes, let’s get this out of the way, “Where Is My Mind?” was at the end of Fight Club. Yes, they used in in an HBO commercial for The Dark Knight. But all that goes away when you hear “Stop!” Then you’re just engrossed in the song. Francis said he was inspired by a small fish chasing him in the Caribbean. I’m not sure how on led to the other, but thank god it did. The structure of the song, the chords, the melody, even the “ooos” in the background, everything on this song is great. Bizarre, creepy, indie, rock and roll, pop perfection. Every note the guitar plays strikes a sonic blow to your mind, and the jarring drop-out, with just the echoing “oo” at the end is terrific. Undoubtedly, one of the best songs on the 80’s (then again, I hate the 80’s). “Cactus”, a song I first heard on Bowie’s Heathen album, is another example of the mix of soft and loud vocals The Pixies are famous for. The verses of this song are hidden behind pounding bass, guitar and drums, and only when Kim Deal comes in do you even know there’s singing happening. At the mid-point, they spell out Pixies (Bowie spelled out David on his record), though that’s something you don’t even notice till your third or fourth listen. Well, now you’ll notice it. Sorry I ruined that for you.

Here’s one of my favorites on the album, “Tony’s Theme”. Just for the way the scream out “To-ny!” for the chorus. It just seems like it had to be so much fun to play. “Oh My Golly” is the track that gave the album it’s title, with the lyric “Besando chichando con surfer rosa.” Yes, they are speaking in Spanish and then shouting “Oh My Golly”. there is no way to explain the elements of this song and make it sound as awesome as it is. By all logic, it shouldn’t work, but it does. “Oh My Golly” has one of the best bass lines and best choruses of any song on this album, and is one of it’s true highlights, especially with that drum and bass interlude towards the end. At the end of “Oh My Golly”, you hear Black explaining something Kim said in the studio. Albini tacked it on thinking it would sound cool. He later regretted it, proving even gifted producers make mistakes.

(That still doesn’t excuse Phil Spector)

“Vamos” is one of the more erratic tracks on the album, but once again, when Kim’s back-ups come on, the song becomes infectiously catchy. Try not to bounce around to that bass line. I dare you. Again, this song shouldn’t work, but god damn it, it does. You never hear something like this on a studio album. Maybe live, when the guitarist is drunk and fucking around, but never on a studio album. You say that a lot while listening to Surfer Rosa, and that’s what makes it so unique.

“I’m Amazed” (which begins with Kim explaining how a teacher from her school got fired for being “into field hockey players”) and “Brick Is Red” go on to confirm the point I’ve been trying to make in this review, which is that The Pixies genius comes not from rebelling against or pandering to mainstream music, but fusing alternative styles of playing recording, and applying them to songs which at their core are pop.

Without a doubt, The Pixies are one of the most influential bands in recent memory, and if their sold out reunion shows prove anything, it’s that they may finally be getting their due. The band is unique, incredibly talented, and certainly worth a listen. Surfer Rosa is a genius album, and maybe some folks won’t dig it, but if I’ve turned at least one person on to these guys, I’ve done my job on this blog. So give Surfer Rosa a listen. I don’t think you’ll regret it.

-Mike

See you next for #83: I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You by Aretha Franklin. Yep, right after The Pixies. I love this gig.

P.S. Kim Deal is one of the most underrated women in rock. Just sayin’.

#98: This Year’s Model- Elvis Costello

Listened to: MP3

To imagine this coming out in 1998 is easy. To picture this coming out in 1978 is near impossible. This album’s sound is massively ahead of it’s time. “No Action” is an anthem worthy of the 90’s punk revival (Yes, Green Day, I do want you to cover this song). “This Year’s Girl” is Buddy Holly meets The Pixies, and to be honest, outrocks them both at times. Just listen to that bass line. That’s a tasty-ass bassline. Yes, I just used the words tasty-ass. Cut me some slack, I just finished writing a depressing as shit screenplay for the 6th time. I’m being upbeat. This is Elvis’ first album with The Attractions, and it truly shows how much of an asset they were to him.

“The Beat” is traditional Elvis Costello awesome. 50’s pop construction with a slightly punk/psychedlic vibe, mixed with Elvis’ Mozart-tinged vocal melodies. I know, you wouldn’t thing, but some of the vocal lines he sings on this song have a real Mozart vibe.

Now, you wanna talk about a great appreciation for the importance of bass, look no further than “Pump It Up”. With a shout along chorus, a sound that belongs on a strokes album, and lyrics that speak to every man’s youth, “Pump It Up” is a masterful rock classic. Does it sound familiar? That’s because you’ve already heard it in part. It was used in “Egg Man” on the Beastie Boys magnum opus “Paul’s Boutique”.

Now, Nick’s had me listening to a lot of Tom Waits lately (Nick Young: Tom Waits as Mike Natale: Glen Hansard or Leonard Cohen), so that when I heard the piano part of “Little Triggers”, I thought we were going into a grumbly ballad. Instead, we get Elvis rocking and wailing in a slow-dance track with one of my favorite drum parts of any song thus far. This brings us to the far-far-far ahead of it’s time “You Belong To Me”. No wonder Pitchfork.com gave this a 10.0. This sounds like an indie track by some obscure band guys who think their cool for listening to indie music listen to.

Switching over to side two (which I would do if I had Nick’s copy on vinyl on me. Alas, I won’t be with it for another hour) we get “Hand In Hand”. With an intro worthy of Pink Floyd, Elvis moves into a melody which makes me so glad he sounds the way he does (despite Elvis reportedly hating his voice). This sweet ballad is followed by what might be my favorite track on the album, the Clash-esque “Chelsea (I Don’t Want To Go)”. I said Clash-esque, but it’s almost like Elvis mixed The Clash with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, before RHCP even existed. The track is so awesome, so bouncy, so well done, that this track alone ought to win you over.

“Lip Service” is a fun little number where you can almost see Elvis grappling the mic like James Brown as he tries to stop himself from dancing to his own awesome track. Plus, the guitars sound like Johnny Marr, and that’s always a good thing. The harmonies on “Living In Paradise” are delicious, and that organ part is my favorite thus far. This is kind of like a sincere Weezer song.
Now, remember when I said “Little Triggers” had my favorite drum part thus far? The thus far was because we hadn’t gotten to “Lipstick Vogue” yet. This is a great, frenetic track, with an awesome bass part, and a drum track to die for. Come on, this is a killer track, just admit it. You gotta.

The album ends on the military march-esque “Night Rally”, which recalls to mind, probably just form the title, the drag race scene from “Rebel Without A Cause”. Remind me later to add this song as the soundtrack to that scene.

So, all in all, This Year’s Model is a fun album deserving a place on this list. All the tracks had to be even more mind-blowing in the days before indie rock and weezer, who clearly jacked the shit outta this album. It may be called This Year’s Model, but it’s actually a model of something 20 years to come (from 1978 that is).

-Mike

Tomorrow will be #316: Rock Steady by No Doubt.

#128: Marquee Moon- Television

Nick Young:

Listened to: MP3

For some bands finding a sound that instantly enables listeners to identify as “quintessential (fill in the blank)” just comes naturally. When the Strokes released their incendiary debut album “Is This It” in 2001, they confidently oozed sex and frustration from every aching pore so well and with such reckless abandon it’s as though Julian Casablancas and company burst forth from their mothers’ wombs already angsty and horny as Hell. In short, they were born to make records.

Fellow New York City rockers Interpol exuded the same vigorous innate certainty on their 2002 debut “Turn On The Bright Lights.” Their unique breed of disaffected intensity is most apparent on their suffocated single “Obstacle 1,” a song the band revealed during a WKQX Radio interview was written after watching a news report about a model’s untimely death. However, though the lyrical content belongs strictly to them, I have a hard time believing the song would exist at all without Television’s colossally influential 1977 LP “Marquee Moon.”
To listen to both songs back to back is to experience a startling revelation: “Obstacle 1” is basically “Marquee Moon’s” eponymous title played at double speed (as if Interpol covered the song and released it at 45 RPM instead of the expected 33 RPM speed). I mean this not as a negative criticism. Quite the contrary actually- I believe imitation truly is the sincerest form of flattery. Both songs are great in their ways. Still, “Marquee Moon” does have one advantage over its darkened 21st century reimagining:

It came first.

Television’s debut came at an absolutely perfect time in music history. The album broke conventions of what a punk record or a rock record could sound like. The end product can’t be lumped into either genre. “Moon” takes the spirit of both sources and, as Ian Curtis once apathetically wailed on Joy Division’s “Disorder,” loses the feeling.

Current Indie artists such as the Mae Shi and Girls have found a way to harness the soul-consuming numbness that Television once so gracefully evoked and have brought it into our time. I could easily imagine Girls frontman Christopher Owens croon “the world was so thin between my bones and my skin,” a lyric from “Marquee Moon’s” second track, “Venus,” sung with cool, atrophic indifference by Television lead singer Tom Verlaine.

His voice has aged quite well since the years it haunted CBGB’s in the era of the Velvet Underground- most likely because anyone growing up today (or in any other time for that matter) learns at some point that it pays impassive. Jim Jones of the Diplomats / Def Jam’s Blakroc really hit the mark when he rapped, “It don’t bother you, it don’t bother.” I think Verlaine would agree. Hey, whatever works right?

Television best conveys the universal human struggle to remain aloof on the album’s eponymous ten-minute centerpiece when Verlaine describes a chance meeting with a ragged, rail-riding hobo who sounds like he’s the physical embodiment of the drifter, “the poor boy whose story is seldom told,” in Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Boxer.” The derelict instructions seem simple at first. The complexity of his words is entirely reliant on how you interpret them:

“Look here junior- don’t you be so happy, and for heaven’s sake, don’t be so sad.”

Does ‘junior’ find this comforting or unsettling? Will he embrace life in all of its gloriously maddening uncertainty? I have an idea of how he interpreted it, but so do you. It’s not really about how the vagabond’s attempt at consolation affect Verlaine- I’m sure he’s thought it over plenty. It’s about what the lyric means to you, the listener. You can either appreciate it for what it is or you can complain about his diction as he spins his tale.* Personally, I think everybody should listen to this album at least once. If it’s not your thing, at least there are still four hundred and ninety-six other records I can recommend during this insane online odyssey of ours.


*That’s actually a lyric from “Marquee Moon’s” third track, “Friction.”

-Nick

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Mike Natale:

Listened to: MP3

I must admit, I knew nothing of Television before listening to this album, aside to the fact that when Jeff Buckley’s debut album Grace was released, one reviewer suggested that the album’s “shimmery, dynamic style suggests careful study of Tom Verliane, who, I later discovered, is the lead singer and guitarist for the band. So, since Buckley is a personal idol of mine (I know that sounds biased, but everyone has a bias, especially because what you draw from art depends on what you bring to it. I just choose to wear my bias on my sleeve) I was excited to check the album out. I was told repeatedly it was a major force in the post-punk movement, and thereby a major influence to modern alternative rock.

So let me where my bias on my sleeve again. I dislike “alternative rock”. Don’t get me wrong, I dig Radiohead and some others, but it’s frustrating how every music act today is alternative. Everybody who listens to some music, be it the black clothing clad emo kids, the screaming, roaring death-core, metal-core, math-core, I-have-low-self-confidence-and-feel-the-need-to-fit-in-core toolbags, the tonue-so-far-in-their-cheek-it’s-piercing-through Weezer fans, or the hipster indie rock college radio “I listen to bands nobody’s ever heard of, and loudly criticize anything remotely popular so that makes me cool” douche bags, everybody seems to think they’re rebelling against the “mainstream”. But when you ask them to point out this “mainstream” music, they just point fingers at each other. It would seem that Jonas Brothers fans are the only true rebels these days.

But the true struggle I have with “alternative rock”, primarily the college radio brand, is that it’s become so about not succumbing to the musical mainstream that it stops being musical. Any one who feels the need can front an “indie” band, and while the instrumentalists get better and better, the “singers” seem to just worsen with time.

I realize these first three paragraphs were a rant against today’s music scene, but I thought it only fair to inform you of the melodic battlefield I’ve walked through to finally get to Marquee Moon, today’s album.

The first three tracks of the album failed to impress me initially. I thought “Great, here’s another ‘alternative rock’ band.” But then I realized. This album came out in 1977. Like the MC5 nearly ten years before them, Television was way ahead of it’s time. So, while today those first three tracks may seem nothing special, you have to put yourself into the context in which they were composed, and you’ll truly appreciate them for what they are. You may not enjoy them, but you’ll appreciate them.

It is the fourth track on the album where the genius truly begins. The 10 minute epic title track is equal parts Pink Floyd and Patti Smith. It boggles the mind to imagine a 10 minute track being released as a single, and even more shocking is the discovery that it actually had some success. But all this surprise disappears when you hear the track, which seems to go in a million different sonic directions, while never once ceasing to be an honest outcry from Verliane, who’s guitar virtuosity is in full effect. I’m not sure if Verlaine had even heard Serge Gainsbourg’s Histoire de Melody Nelson, but this track could be an English-language demo from it.

The next track, Elevation, can only be described as what happens when a Talking Heads track sleeps with Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures. Since it’s not as musically ambitious as the previous track, it’s able to pack all that energy into the melody, unleashing a powerhouse of strumming and vocals.

While Marquee Moon may be the most musically dynamic song on the album, I was most impressed by the track Guiding Light for being so…well, normal. Guiding Light could very easily be a Kelly Clarkson ballad. Albeit that may be a bit of a stretch, but it can’t be denied that this track has a very classic sound to it, which is unexpected when one listens to the rest of the album, and reminds me of the first time one hears Here Comes Your Man by The Pixies on Doolittle. Guiding Light caused me to admire Verlaine more, for understanding that good music is good music, and that rebellion shouldn’t be an artists sole goal.

After Prove It, another track equal in force and compositional prowess, comes Torn Curtain, the album’s final track (unless one listens to Little Johnny Jewel (Parts 1 & 2) on the CD version) The chorus of Torn Curtain has that powerful, finale nature that reminds me of the finale of Godspell. For the record, I love Godspell. I’d hate to compare Marquee Moon yet again to Histoire de Melody Nelson, as the two are extraordinarily different albums as a whole, but Torn Curtain does have that same closing satisfaction one gets from Cargo Culte on the aforementioned Gainsbourg album. Torn Curtain leaves one with a sense of completion or closure upon finishing Marquee Moon, but that by no means should encourage you to take the album off your record player. Though I’ve only listened to the album twice so far, I can just feel that this is one of those albums that gets better each time you listen to it. For anyone who is a music lover, Marquee Moon is definitely worth a listen, and to imagine any “indie” music fans that haven’t heard this is like picturing Green Day fans who’ve never heard the Sex Pistols. You know they exist, but when you finally meet one, it take everything in you not to smack your forehead with the palm of your hand.

One more fun fact: Tom Verlaine was in discussion with Jeff Buckley to produce his second album. He produced the original sessions. Yeah, I now have the utmost respect for Verlaine.

-Mike

So, thanks for reading, and see you all tomorrow for #154: The Low End Theory by A Tribe Called Quest.