The year 1985 was not exactly a memorable one for rock, becoming the central sag of the saggiest decade in its proudly loud history.
Times had long been a’changing: The passionate energy that ignited audiences en masse through the 1960s and ’70s had been replaced by Wall Street-endowed corporate rock bands who were more concerned with ticket sales, logos and ad space than music. Young music lovers took note, preferring to turn their ears to the streets, where independent music was producing anything but the same-old same.
These acts never quite made it commercially, never quite fit in anywhere, but also never quite gave a damn. Generally speaking, the ’80s amounted to popular music’s decade-long bad hair day. There was too much money and too many shiny new gadgets. Combined with the birth of MTV’s pressure on looking better (literally, more colorful) than the next band, the era conspired to make bands overlook their very heart: Music.
The plus side to all of this was, of course, the underground. This scene was bustling with creativity and angsty, wacky energy, although it was obviously somewhat disorganized. Most of the independent music coming out was different combinations of avant-pop, quirky synthesizers, the residual anger of punk, and hip-hop’s fresh mojo. Where mainstream rock was becoming ever more spiritually bankrupt and sponsor-designed, the underground scenes were for the most part hungrily creative but lacking in direction.
Then a certain young man, whose infancy had been touched by a UFO, formed a band called, temporarily, Pixies in Panoply. Lo, things did change.
From rock’s musical wasteland – or rather, junkyard – Charles Thompson (soon to be Black Francis, then temporarily Frank Black) and cohorts salvaged a couple of punk power-chords, some wobbly surf-rock riffs, a lovely stray melody or three, a few kinky nightmares, and a whole bunch of otherworldly objects, then single-bandedly offered a new release for youthful angst and hormone-addled happy-sad lusty-howl frustration.
In the process, the Pixies burst open the floodgates for alternative rock and its looming offspring, grunge.
You’d be forgiven for frowning at claims of the Pixies’ impact on modern rock. After all, were it not for the evergreen popularity of tracks like “This Monkey’s Gone to Heaven,” “Here Comes Your Man” and “Velouria,” few contemporary fans of alternative rock would even be aware of them. Disbanding after four potent years, they ducked out just before their quiet/LOUD/quiet template became all the rage.
Yet countless bands, as diverse as the Smashing Pumpkins, Nirvana and Radiohead, were simply inconceivable without the Pixies: Kurt Cobain even admitted that “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was basically an attempt at writing a Pixies song.
More of a phenomenon than a band, the Pixies were one of those once-in-a-lifetime events where four random people get together and some higher synergy snaps into alignment, changing the currents of popular music. Even Kim Deal (later of the Breeders) and Black Francis (the little black heart that pumped the band) struggled to survive its demise, despite their inarguable talents.
The Come on Pilgrim EP arrived in 1987 with their sound fully formed, and the later Doolittle and Bossanova were among their most successful. But 1988’s seminal full-length debut Surfer Rosa tipped the scales and re-ignited a stale rock genre. When the album dropped, it was like nothing heard before: Lyrically, it was David Lynch meets punk, hopping merrily from giddy daydream to incest to random Spanish to howling and back, often within the space of a minute. At the same time, its music fluxed between syrupy harmonies and dark fury, with Francis’ possessed shrieks blotting out even the distorted howls of guitar.
Somehow, the chaos was tight and considered, the Pixies didn’t hide their affection for infectious melodies. Having no blatant debts, their sound couldn’t be measured against anyone else’s. It was its own beast.
However widely copied, the sheer cohesive-meets-chaotic novelty of Surfer Rosa stands alone. In the irony of poetic justice, this LP sounds fresher today than most subsequent, and more commercially successful, releases indebted to it via grunge and alternative.
[First published in Muse magazine.]
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