Pixies
Doolittle

THE REVIEW

I’ll give it a try. But it won’t be easy to review my favorite album. I bought it on a whim 25 years ago because in Mucchio Selvaggio they compared it to U2, and at 19 I adored U2. I immediately realized that U2 had nothing to do with that album, but the disappointment didn’t last long. Back then, if you spent 20,000 lire on an album, you made sure to listen to it carefully before shelving it as garbage. It took about ten listens with the Pixies. Then I slipped into it and never came out. I listen to it every now and then, as one does with relics, each time with the fear that "it's not like it used to be..." But no, even yesterday, after 25 years, I find myself moved like the pimpled teenager I was as I sing Silver at the top of my lungs, not knowing exactly why, just as I didn’t back then... the problem (and the delight) of this album is that you never fully understand it. You start with Debaser and you’re already bewildered, you even studied that song, you’ve sung it in front of an audience, but you still don’t get it, and it’s not a Jethro Tull song... but everything is already there: fantasy, anger, neurosis, musical complexity, and punk immediacy, no wonder this site is devoted to it. I imagine it’s about the game of opposites, like the story of the good cop and the bad cop, first the slap and then the caress (and perversely you don’t know what you like more, it’s stuff that disorients you...). Kim Deal and Franc Black, the two souls of the band, who we’ll discover in their solo careers have remarkably different sensibilities, are so close here that they create a magic that made history and won’t be repeated in the subsequent albums. I’ll avoid analyzing the individual songs, others have done it better than me, I’ll just say that each one is a world of its own and deserves at least a hundred listens. Upon reflection, this is thus not a review either. Just a sort of personal homage to a piece of plastic that has been so important to me. And to the pimpled teenager I was (and evidently still somewhat am). Amen.