Doolittle

Product Information

Black Francis was chubby and balding, and the only member who looked like they belonged on stage was the bassist, who preferred to go under her married name of Mrs John Murphy. Every week, Album of the Week Club listens to and discusses the album in question, votes on how good it is, and publishes our findings, with the aim of giving people reliable reviews and the wider rock community the chance to contribute. Sleeve and inners have some minor discoloration marks and there is a very small tear on the opening side, inner booklet has no creases or tears. Their second full-length album, Doolittle, was released in April 1989, towards the end of a startling 18-month period for experimental US guitar rock. Bands such as Husker Du, Sonic Youth and Fugazi piqued my interest and part of this scene were The Pixies.

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Definitely the best album they ever made, although admittedly I haven't given anything released this century a chance. There's no runout codes on it, but it appears to be mastered by RKS at Sterling and pressed at QRP based on my understanding of what their pressings tend to look like. The one I like is labeled 'UK Surf'; I’d be interested to hear other Club member opinions comparing the two. Kim Deal got only one co-songwriting credit on Doolittle, the parched and eerie country drone of Silver – in an act of astonishing pig-headedness, the Pixies declined to perform any of the Deal-penned songs that ended up on the Breeders’ fantastic debut album, Pod. And as the extra discs of Peel Sessions and demos in this deluxe edition reveal, others stemmed from the band’s attempts to bridge the gulf between the way they actually sounded and something that might conceivably be acceptable to a mainstream audience.Drummer Lovering steps up to the mike for the throwaway, tongue-in-cheek La La Love You and takes a turn on bass on the psycho-cowboy-maybe-drug-related Silver with Kim Deal playing slide guitar on the only song she is credited with on the album. Pixies: Doolittle - Album Of The Week Club review One of the albums that altered the course of rock music as we know it, how will the Pixies' Doolittle stand up to the Album Of The Week Club scrutineers? Black Francis's caterwauling complemented nicely by Kim Deal's backing vocals and solidly underpinned by her bass and Lovering's drums with Joey Santiago's guitar riding over and around it all. I listened on a U-Turn Orbit with Ortofon 2M Blue into a Schiit Mani and then a Schiit Vali with my HD6XX headphones. Sure it's solid, in fact good, and Kim Deal is a pretty good bass player, Joey Santiago is a decent guitarist and Black Francis's lyrics and style of singing are unique, to put it mildly.

Pixies - Doolittle (Vinyl, UK, 1989) For Sale | Discogs Pixies - Doolittle (Vinyl, UK, 1989) For Sale | Discogs

Their other influences were hard to place, which was unsurprising, given that frontman Black Francis’s tastes ran to Christian rock pioneer Larry Norman, author of Forget Your Hexagram, No More LSD for Me, and Why Should The Devil Have All The Good Music?

At its best, Doolittle was almost impossibly thrilling, packed with evidence of why alt-rock shifted in the Pixies’ wake. Doolittle is bookended by violence, mainly being perpetrated on eyeballs, from the Bunuel-inspired surrealist slicing in Debaser to some Old Testament gouging, Samson and Delilah style, in closer Gouge Away.

Pixies: Doolittle 25 review – alt-rock milestone from US Pixies: Doolittle 25 review – alt-rock milestone from US

The jackets are both nicely printed also, my beef is the insert: it only has lyrics for half the songs, and the photos are printed very small and only monotone. While the nice heavy weight vinyl plays cleanly and is reasonably dynamic, there’s not much by ways soundstage and instrument separation.

Misses being NM due to faintest marks on vinyl from taking in and out of carboard lyric inner sleeve.