Pixies Doolittle, 1989
The first thing about this album is that I certainly don't know it as well as most people that love this album. And I certainly am not well-versed in the Pixies' body of work. This is the only album I own by them and I had to get it twice to appreciate it.
I saw it on one "Best Albums of All Time" countdown or another. I feel like it was on VH1, but it could just as easily have been in Rolling Stone or Spin. I knew that "Where Is My Mind?" was the quirky little song at the end of Fight Club and that Kurt Cobain said that Nirvana were basically just ripping off the Pixies on "Smells Like Teen Spirit". Oh, and Eddie and Mark talk about the Pixies, specifically their gorgeous baselines, at the end of Empire Records (at least the did on the original cut. Who knows? Maybe that got taken out in the "Special Fan Edition").
So I got the album. I think it may have been for Christmas. And I'm fairly certain it was SYoC (because every album on this list has some relevance to my Sophomore Year of College, it's turning out).
And I just couldn't get into it. It wasn't loud enough, angry enough, fast enough. Basically, it wasn't Nirvana and I was disappointed. So I sold the album. Well, I got rid of it, at least. I don't remember selling it, but I had it at one point and then I didn't.
So then years later, I'm living in an apartment with Kristen (who was my fiancee at the time) (and is now my wife) and I put a Facebook status (Which I can't find.....Good God. It may have been an AIM Away Message....) up saying that I wanted people to suggest albums to put in my car's CD changer and that they could recommend anything but if they recommended an album I didn't have, they had to send me the songs so I could burn the CD. So my friend Jesse Wells suggested a number of albums that became super important to me. And one of them was Doolittle.
And this time it made sense. And I felt really stupid for having not "gotten" it before.
The basslines ARE beautiful. The music IS angry and loud and sometimes fast. But it's not punk, or pop-punk, or whatever I was hoping for it to be in 2003. It's an album that is effortless to listen to and always enjoyable.
Here's a video for my sister's favorite song on the album:
And here are two of MY favorite songs on the album. Though, like I said at the beginning, you probably are already very familiar with them.
Pixies - Wave of Mutilation
Pixies - La La Love You
Oh and if you wanted to see that part of Empire Records, here it is. Discussion winds its way around to the Pixies at (0:51):
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