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Peter Walker
- FB Fan -
United Kingdom
189 Posts |
 Posted - 04/30/2004 : 03:29:28
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I haven't typed it up (seeing as it's a full page, with another full page picture, I was kinda hoping someone else would save me the bother!) but the new Best Of gets a fulsome, five star review in this month's Q. The odd factual error in it, but it's so overwhelmingly positive I'll let the guy off.
If no-one else writes it up, I'll key it in some point over the weekend; couldn't find it anywhere else online. |
Edited by - Peter Walker on 04/30/2004 03:30:20 |
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gk128
- FB Fan -
USA
129 Posts |
Posted - 04/30/2004 : 04:34:14
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Well the point of a thread on a review is to have the review pasted or linked in the thread.
My CD List:
www.cd-tracker.com/~gk128 |
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Peter Walker
- FB Fan -
United Kingdom
189 Posts |
Posted - 04/30/2004 : 04:51:52
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quote:
Originally posted by gk128
Well the point of a thread on a review is to have the review pasted or linked in the thread.
My CD List:
www.cd-tracker.com/~gk128
And the point of this thread was to hopefully alert someone who might have a link to post it, because I didn't; note my offer to type it up if no such thing exists. Think you're being a bit harsh, but if I've totally ruined your day, my sincerest apologies. |
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benji
> Teenager of the Year <
New Zealand
3426 Posts |
Posted - 04/30/2004 : 05:24:27
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there was also a full pager in the new nme..
but it's not on their site yet.
 "I joined the Cult of Frank / I think that man deserves a DB!" |
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jo
= Cult of Ray =
United Kingdom
516 Posts |
Posted - 04/30/2004 : 07:27:08
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there's been some amazing glowing reviews... Kerrang! also gave it a good review. I'm just waiting for next weeks Heat to put across their perspective of it... they've been mentioning it the last few weeks.
Yes, I read Heat. |
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PixieSteve
> Teenager of the Year <
Poland
4698 Posts |
Posted - 04/30/2004 : 07:34:21
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| CD or DVD? |
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Peter Walker
- FB Fan -
United Kingdom
189 Posts |
Posted - 04/30/2004 : 07:51:19
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The Q review was of the CD; the DVD was favourably mentioned too, although far more briefly.
And Jo, of course you read Heat. You're a girl.
I'll get me coat. |
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Peter Walker
- FB Fan -
United Kingdom
189 Posts |
Posted - 05/01/2004 : 02:19:11
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Ok, here it is. Like I say, the odd factual error, and you might not agree with some of his opinions. But basically he loved it, and a five-star, two-page review in the biggest selling music monthly in the UK can't be a bad thing.
BLACK MAGIC
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THERE’S BEEN NOTHING LIKE THEM BEFORE OR SINCE. NOT EVEN NIRVANA….
*****
It was as if they’d wandered out of the desert, babbling in tongues. Something nasty must have happened out there; beyond that, details were sketchy. The small, chubby guy called himself Black Francis – a refugee from Southern California via the University of Massachusetts in Boston. The cool, broad-faced woman called herself Mrs John Murphy, or sometimes Kim Deal. She had a touch of the Navajo about her, and had already been married – both made her seem rather exotic.
Then there were the songs they sang: freakish, squalling things with flamenco chord progressions and lyrics that seemed mainly (at least at first) to be about rural incest. One song, Broken Face, was narrated by a cackling village idiot, his features ravaged by generations of inbreeding (“I’ve got no lips, I’ve got no tongue”). Vamos seemed to précis a conversation between two peons considering a move to New Jersey, concluding with the hope that their sons “will be all well hung”. Lesbians were also involved.
Four and a half albums later, Pixies would disband as legends, yet the intense strangeness of their arrival cannot be overstated. Charles Michael Kitteridge Thompson IV, the man behind Black Francis’s lurid mask of shrieking and deviancy, had been a born-again Christian until the age of 17 and wrote songs in front of the mirror, where he’d lure his evil side to the surface. Returning to Boston in 1986 after studying Spanish in Puerto Rico, Thompson convinced roommate Joey Santiago to form a band with him. Deal answered their incongruous ad for a bassist influenced by Husker Du and Peter, Paul & Mary, and it was she who recruited drummer David Lovering. As their eight-track demo – christened “the Purple Tape” and finally released in 2002 – proves, they immediately sounded like no other band.
Venerable UK indie label 4AD – previously notable for solemn, FX-pedal rock exemplified by the Cocteau Twins – picked them up as if in a two-Boston-bands-for-one deal with Throwing Muses. Label boss Ivo Watts-Russell hadn’t even been sure they’d fit in – his Head Of Press, Deborah Edgley, had to convince him it didn’t matter – and of course he was dead right. The Pixies stuck out from the off, their savage punk sound at odds with the reverb-drenched wussiness that surrounded them. Lovering’ss unbending beat and lead guitarist Santiago’s quasi-metal slashing were indubitably rock ‘n’ roll when such things were mistrusted, while producer Steve Albini lent their full-length debut – 1988’s Surfer Rosa – a dry, primitive, gloriously abrasive sound that hasn’t dated a jot.
Notoriously argumentative, British fans of alternative rock quickly agreed to agree on the Pixies. The songs’ tableaux of American weirdness chimed with ‘80s student touchstones from Eraserhead to Wiseblood to Paris, Texas. What’s more, and despite their individual uncomeliness, Pixies were sexy. Gigantic, their first drop-dead pop single, was breathily sung by Deal, the cooed promise “He’s like the dark, but I’d want him” resolved with a properly orgasmic chorus. But that wasn’t all. Francis seemed permanently sex-fevered, yelping and barking like a voodoo sex djinn, while the brazenly exposed breasts of a flamenco dancer – the centrepiece of the Surfer Rosa cover – practically poked you in the eye. In the chaste, over-serious world of indie, this was rare titillation.
Sealing the deal, their timing was perfect. The Smiths split in 1987, R.E.M. were moving mainstream. Pixies applied for the vacant post of flagship band to the alternative rock subculture, and the release in 1989 of Doolittle – one of the greatest rock or pop albums of any era – made the appointment a shoo-in. Doolittle was the Pixies stepping out of their barrio into a wider world, and rightly dominates Wave Of Mutilation with seven contributions.
It’s terrific stuff. Here Comes Your Man remains easily their most generous pop tune, skipping along on a deft beat like an early Beatles song, while Debaser infuses sunny surf-rock with something of the night. Then there’s Monkey Gone To Heaven – a melancholy, bass-driven eco-anthem that towers over them all, shattering into hysteria while a raging Francis strives to discern a morsel of justice in the universe, all over Santiago’s best Thin Lizzy lick. Gil Norton – soundsmith behind Echo & The Bunnymen’s Ocean Rain and, latterly, Distillers’ Coral Fang – gave this scary music a friendly, atmospheric polish and suddenly the Pixies were accessible – imperial even.
It couldn’t last. Between the Pixies’ zenith and their demise in 1993, Wave Of Mutilation plots a gentle decline, picking only three songs apiece from Bossanova (translation: “new beat”) and Trompe Le Monde (translation: “fool the world”). For the former, Thompson delved further into his early radio listening in California, channelling surf and instrumental music from Dick Dale to Travis Wammack. For the latter, Norton helped undertake a major overhaul – scaring up a brutal, metallic sound perfectly suited to rifftastic single Planet Of Sound, but helpless to dress up some of Francis’ less realised (and UFO-fixated) songs.
Arguably, Wave…. could be kinder to the final albums. Bossanova’s best track, the Doolittle-esque Dig For Fire, is here, but this would be a rounder compilation for Trompe Le Monde’s Subbacultcha, a crunching version of a song with origins on the Purple Tape. But by this time, the Pixies were indeed fooling the world – generally into believing that all was well internally. In fact Deal was no longer singing new Pixies songs and her Breeders side-project promised greater fulfilment. Thompson grew less and less tolerant of her – especially on the road, where tension made their stint on U2’s Zoo TV tour unbearable – and he’d ungallantly announce, during interviews for his 1993 solo album (as Frank Black) that Deal had, in any case, only ever written “one quarter of one Pixies song” (i.e. Gigantic) and effectively called time on the band. Meanwhile, alt-rock kids had elected a new flagship band – the more straightforwardly iconic Nirvana.
Ah, Nirvana. These days, Pixies are rarely mentioned other than in the context of Nirvana – as if their only achievement was to inspire Kurt Cobain to write Smells Like Teen Spirit. We’ll hear more of this kind of thing as their reunion tour rumbles on, aggressively marketed to the post-Nevermind generation of rock festival-goers. But the Pixies deserve better than bracketing with the Melvins and Flipper and all the other dreck that Cobain happened to like. Their records offer mischief and surrealism and bursts of sexed-up joie de vivre where Nirvana songs – as strong as they are and yes, so sonically startling – promise only misanthropy.
So let’s tear up the Nirvana prologue and write the Pixies their own chapter. They rocked, but they did more. They sold tickets to a punk rock freak show of whores, mermaids, monkeys, alien corpses and child molesters. They were simultaneously crazy and compassionate. They made you wonder why something so wrong could feel so right. And if it wasn’t for them we probably wouldn’t know what the Spanish for “jerk-off”. It’s “puneta”, by the way. (Danny Eccleston)
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offerw
* Dog in the Sand *
South Africa
1264 Posts |
Posted - 05/03/2004 : 10:36:44
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Thank you for the review. I fully agree that whenever the Pixies are mentioned nowadays the words Nirvana and Kurt Cobain are often to be read soon after. The Pixies are so much more than one of Cobain's favorite bands.
wilhelm |
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Mac E. Doobage
= Cult of Ray =
503 Posts |
Posted - 05/03/2004 : 18:44:23
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Yeah, calm down.
quote]Originally posted by gk128
Well the point of a thread on a review is to have the review pasted or linked in the thread.
My CD List:
www.cd-tracker.com/~gk128
[/quote]
Awwwwwwwwwww Lil' Buddage! |
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Cult_Of_Frank
= Black Noise Maker =
Canada
11687 Posts |
Posted - 05/03/2004 : 22:52:40
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I don't know, I liked it anyway. About the first article to reference Nirvana and make me smile while doing so. Kudos, Mr. Eccleston!
 "Join the Cult of Frank / And you'll be enlightened" |
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Homers_pet_monkey
= Official forum monkey =
United Kingdom
17125 Posts |
Posted - 05/06/2004 : 10:28:01
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Puneta!!!
Hansel and Gretel have formed a band, .....And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Breadcrumbs!!! |
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solace
= Cult of Ray =
USA
278 Posts |
Posted - 05/07/2004 : 13:01:16
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can anyone answer me if this new best of is remastered or anything? curious if there's any reason to buy it.
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Cult_Of_Frank
= Black Noise Maker =
Canada
11687 Posts |
Posted - 05/07/2004 : 13:21:19
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Heh heh, Jo has answered that question about a gazillion times, so I'll take this one for her...
Nope, not remastered. The only reason to purchase this would be to give to a Pixies newbie or if you're a completist and have to have everything Pixies.
Interestingly, the tracks actually WERE remastered but the remasters were rejected and they went with the originals on the final disc.
"Join the Cult of Frank / And you'll be enlightened" |
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solace
= Cult of Ray =
USA
278 Posts |
Posted - 05/07/2004 : 14:54:11
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ahhh, that sucks, thanks Dean-o :)
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Itchload
= Cult of Ray =
USA
891 Posts |
Posted - 05/09/2004 : 16:46:39
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They probably had to do quite a bit of leveling out though. If you play a Surfer Rosa song next to a Bossanova one there's a huge volume difference.
The review was nice, I wish he didn't slag off the last two albums. |
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kempes
- FB Fan -
Ireland
49 Posts |
Posted - 05/11/2004 : 08:49:46
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I saw in the paper yesterday that it went it at no 16. in the UK album charts.
Not bad eh?
Kempes
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billgoodman
>> Denizen of the Citizens Band <<
Netherlands
6217 Posts |
Posted - 05/11/2004 : 14:04:44
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quote:
Originally posted by Cult_Of_Frank
Interestingly, the tracks actually WERE remastered but the remasters were rejected and they went with the originals on the final disc.
"Join the Cult of Frank / And you'll be enlightened"
MMM, they were remastered for the real albums in the first place
not for the best of
although I know they probably put the remasters on the best of
but just to let solace know the full story
before Jo has to stop by
 "I joined the Cult of Frank/Nobody wanted to join my Culf" |
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Cult_Of_Frank
= Black Noise Maker =
Canada
11687 Posts |
Posted - 05/11/2004 : 14:22:29
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I was hoping to provoke a visit. :)
"Join the Cult of Frank / And you'll be enlightened" |
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Brackish Girl
~ Soul Eater ~
Ireland
1750 Posts |
Posted - 05/11/2004 : 15:36:14
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quote:
Originally posted by jo
there's been some amazing glowing reviews... Kerrang! also gave it a good review. I'm just waiting for next weeks Heat to put across their perspective of it... they've been mentioning it the last few weeks.
Yes, I read Heat.
my friend has got me into it, since she got upset at me for reading 'now'. at least i don't buy them, people give 'em to me. |
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New "best of" review in Q
