Kurt Cobain did not hide his love for the Pixies in any way. Had
it not been for this band, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” may never have
been recorded. Another college rock favorite, Bob Mould, made a
deliberate Pixies rip off song with “A Good Idea,” off of his
watershedding
Copper Blue CD.
For as influential as the Pixies were, they never really had an
album that fully realized their talents. They came close with
Doolittle, but there wasn’t a classic album in their
collection, like
Daydream Nation or
New Day Rising.
Thank god for “greatest hits” collections. Sure they can be
cheap ways to pour a little more dough into a band’s band accounts,
but in the Pixies case, it’s also the perfect starter for anyone
who was facinated by the influence that the Pixies had on other
bands, but were not old enough to catch the band live or hear them
on college radio stations.
Death To The Pixies his you square in the face with the
first song, “Cecilia Ann.” Between Joey Santiago’s dynamic guitar
skills and Black Francis’ (formerly Charles Thompson, now Frank
Black) backup guitar attack, it’s fair to say that the Pixies were
not content with remaining a cult band. Their sound was big, and
they had the songs to make it big.
The furious assault of each of the musicians were matched by the
stern sense of melody. As pulverizing as “Planet Of Sound” is, the
bass line by Kim Deal throbs clear as a Beatles bass line. If there
was a perfect “Pixies” song, it would have to be “Wave Of
Mutilation”; in under three minutes, you get a towering guitar
intro and a chorus that’s practically impossible to shun off after
the first listen.
After the breathless “Wave,” a pretty spring-like song, “Dig For
Fire” comes on. It’s a nice contrast that shows the strong
songwriting skills of the band. And it also marks a turning point
in
Death To The Pixies. From then on, the songs grow more
experimental, to the point of where you can tell what songs were
Kim Deal-influenced and what songs were all about Black
Francis.
That’s not to say that the earlier songs had their creative
warzones. Thankfully,
Death To The Pixies does not follow a strict chronological
order. The second has many of the songs on the first disc, but
instead the live versions of the songs are performed. The live
versions of some of the songs are radically different than the
studio recordings, not so much as the sound quality, but the
tangents the band hit when they were playing these songs took them
on different roads.
With such a talented lineup, it was inevitable that each member
wanted to go their seperate directions. Unfortunately, each of the
artists made that one great solo album or solo project album and
then either faded into obscurity (Breeders anyone?) or were in
bands that basically let the musician have their own say(Frank
Black). And as history shows, it’s usually nice to have a Keith
Richards or John Lennon to keep the Mick Jagger and Paul
McCartney’s of the world in check and vice versa.
For anyone who is interested in how college rock evolved into
what is was in the early ’90s, there is no closer necessity than
Death To The Pixies to purchase. Find out what songs you
like the best and pick up the album that has most of those songs on
them. Be cautioned however, you’ll never look at Nirvana in the
same light again.
