Doolittle

"Two of them went off with a gallon of white gas to blow up the beach". (Sam Shepard, 'Boredom').

This is everything we've learned up to this point in time, burning. This is the sum of every rock record ever made and much more besides, I'd wager. This is one step into the next revolutionary stage – something that walks like a man, howls like a dog and swims beneath your feet like a smooth cool shark. Doolittle doesn't so much talk of the animals as persuade them to invade Poland.

Up until The Pixies… well, Jesus, it wasn't as if we asked for much. Just a government worth bringing down, a fight worth fighting against, a music worth living for, that kind of thing. Now… well, one out of three ain't bad. My love of The Pixies goes far beyond music criticism… it just can't say enough, or it says too much. There has been so much shit written about them (see elsewhere in this review) that Black Francis (vocals, or 'vocals') constantly seems to feel the need to stress his own philistinism.

Well, philistine or not, the man is a genius. Simple as that. There are those out there who honestly believe that there is no such thing as great rock and roll anymore, that all the genius has been sucked out of the body. This might be OK were it not for the fact that these people control your reading, your tv, your cinema, your music. Fuck 'em!

This is a classic album. Fifteen songs that slice into your deepest, primal fears and dreams like cheese wire. And they do it almost by accident. Eyes closed. 'Debaser' opens the record with a pick-axe. Black Francis breaks his ribs singing while the guitars fly too close to – hell, inside the sun. The fact that this is the first and probably the last song ever written about Bunuel and Dali's surrealistic standard-bearer of 1930, 'Un Chien Andalou', really makes very little difference. He could be singing about anything, absolutely anything, and it would be just as exciting, which I suppose is the point. Just that word, though, 'Debaser'! and the way he shouts it, as if something nasty just dropped off the ceiling into his lap. I could go on.

In every great rock song there's one moment that clacks its bony fingers down your spine and just kills you. In 'Tame' it's when Francis starts heavy-breathing to the music, like a hyperventilating axe-murderer. Believe me, you've never heard anything like it. not since Iggy, anyway. A magic moment, if you will, up there with the opening seconds of 'All Kings Of Everything'.

And then there's the way the guitars softly ('softly') overtake each other at the end of 'No. 13 Baby'. Or the shock of 'Here Comes Your Man', which is about as far away from the idea of The Pixies as it's possible to get. Something like The Beatles crossed with, oh, I dunno, someone else. You can almost imagine them all shaking their mop-tops frantically to the smiling twang of Joey Santiago's guitar.

'Hey' examines the sadness and banality of sex when removed from its meaning: "Uh! said the man to the lady/Uh! said the lady to the man she adored/And the whores like a choir go uh! all night/And Mary aren't you tired of this?"

More, more…'Dead' is an ideal taster of what they're capable of doing to your nervous system. Electric, insect-like chord-changes and minced vocals combined with some truly sick lyrics ("Gimme dead!")… it's almost enough to make you believe that rock could be dangerous again.

I could go on, but my dictionary of superlatives is just about exhausted. Doolittle is certainly not as sand-blasted as 'Surfer Rosa'. The Pixies' stranglehold on rock tradition is relaxing slightly with every record, but this is still a monumentally entertaining piece of work.

A classic, by any other name. 'Derek', for instance.