Pixies

Pixies Reviews: Surfer Rosa


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THE PIXIES
Surfer Rosa
By Mark Sinker
NME, March 1988



PIXIES QUOTE The Fall (a mangled snatch of 'Stephen Song' in 'I'm Amazed'), so we can: "They pass my home at night/oh they are NOTALRIGHT/they are ten times my age/and one-tenth my height" (CityHobgoblins').
Pixies aren't benign. They are NOT ALRIGHT. They sport no friendly 'The' (like Swans, or more pertinently, 'Elves', another terror-struck-little Fall-song), and they make sounding like someone else into an ugly dream that, come morning, you aren't sure you want to remember.
Who do they sound like? 'Gigantic' sounds like Rickie Lee Jones guesting with Pere Ubu to me. They writhe through The Band and Crazy Horse and (especially) The Fall as if they can hear some kind of history which links them all. They do more than sound like people who went before them - they force the past to sound like them. 'Surfer Rosa' doesn't have the brazen Latin-metal invention of their 'Come On Pilgrim' mini-LP from last year - but I can't really remember when I last heard a music with this degree of lazy evil injected into it. Or a music that seemed to pin down things we wouldn't have heard ourselves, to map out ideas in the air and sing them into solid form. With studio backchat and chopped up fragments of songs, they build the same kind of politico-critical semi-conscious assault on their surroundings as more overtly nasty Stateside bands Pussy Galore and the Butthole Surfers.
That's what the new Latin kick's all about, the nueva onda, as reinvented by Pixie-songwriters Black Francis and Mrs John Murphy. The Wonderful & Frightening World of Pixies ends up forcing Anglos to put their ownworld-view through agonizing reappraisal.
So is it ever going to be cool to put (half) naked women on the cover of an LP, however untamely Hispanic they look? It's a matter of the twist inside of who's the real victim.
Pixies have put a viciously eccentric but very subtle curve into the rock they play and replay - if they're enticing a few folks in with a promise of cheap old-style rockist titillation, it's because they want to cheat and humiliate them publicly - to smack them in the face for their submission to sleaze.
Rock America has given up on Like-Me-Like-Me populism, and some of us are beginning to love it as a result. As they say themselves: Oh my golly! Oh my golly! Rosa, oh oh ohh Rosa! Huh! Huh! Rosa, oh oh ohh Rosa! Huh! Huh!
9.5/10
M.S.


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THE PIXIES
Surfer Rosa
Select, April 1988
April's essential listening



It doesn't have the brazen Latin-metal invention of their 'Come On Pilgrim' mini-LP from last year, but I can't really remember when I last heard a music with this degree of lazy evil injected into it. A music that forces Anglos to put their world-view through agonising reappraisal.
M.S.


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THE PIXIES
Surfer Rosa
by Ian Cranna
Q #20, May 1988



Like Big Black (whose former Front man Steve Albini produced this album) the Boston-based Pixies belong to the Lost Souls department of modern American independent rock. In common with many other of the current anti- commercial persuasion, they boast spikey guitars (both biting and fuzzed), a thumping rhythm section and whining, anguished vocals of tantrum-like aggression. But what sets the Pixies apart are their sudden bursts of memorable pure pop melody and an intuitive understanding of song dynamics that makes for positive enjoyment. The 13 tracks have short, uncomfortable titles but lyrics that go beyond the usual black nihilism into personal enigma ("Bloody your bands on a cactus tree/Wipe them on your dress and send it to me" - from Cactus) and, I'd swear, a sense of fun. Not gelling their act together is almost certainly part of the whole point of Pixies, but if they're not careful they could have a bright future in front of them. (The CD version includes their previous Come On Pilgrim mini- LP )
***
I.C.



Last Updated 06-03-97