The Most Classic?
With over two decades of impressive influence in its wake, dare we ask: is Doolittle alternative music's high watermark? The list of those who have genuflected at its careening guitar-work and screaming vocals and radical dynamic shifts is long and well-known: Nirvana, the Foo Fighters, Pavement, Radiohead, Spoon, The Strokes, TV on the Radio... basically, the defining acts of the past 20 years.
To even the most critical set of ears, judging the second album by alt-music legends The Pixies strictly to an 'all-time classic' standard, it's impossible not to get caught up in its near constant thrills. From its very opening number —"Debaser," a college-rock anthem that forged the blueprint for Nirvana's billion-selling "Smells Like Teen Spirit"— Doolittle rolls out in an unstoppable parade of manic energy and irrepressible attitude.
Sometimes, in fact, listening to Doolittle can seem a little bit like listening to a Greatest Hits album. Whole careers could be built around authoring a song as great as "Here Comes Your Man" or "Silver" or "Mr. Grieves" or "I Bleed" or "Wave of Mutilation" or "Monkey Gone to Heaven." The Pixies load a whole album with them; just shoulda-been hit after shoulda-been hit coming after you, relentlessly, without a break. It's like the alterna-rock version of Thriller, or something.
Classic
All this effusive praise probably doesn't read like much of a critical assessment. But, Doolittle's two decades of influence have begat two decades of intense analysis; the LP's every element —from production to chords, lyrics to art design— having been constantly broken down.
Yet, a large part of Doolittle's evergreen appeal —aside from its steady diet of brilliant melodies and tightly-coiled playing— is that it can't be reduced to a singular critical reading; forever maintaining a slippery elusiveness in every word Black Francis bewails in his incredible, variable voice. Inspired by surrealist ideas of automatic writing and the unconscious mind, The Pixies frontman barked out a random collection of poetic fragments rife with sexual and biblical imagery.
Oftentimes its silly —try "Monkey Gone to Heaven"'s opening gambit "there was a guy/an underwater guy who controlled the sea/got killed by ten million pounds of sludge/from New York and New Jersey"— but the insistency of the songs pushes forth every utterance with a pressing profundity ("Monkey Gone to Heaven" being, to these trained ears, a commentary on Christianity's uneasy relationship with evolution).
In the long run, it matters not what exactly Charles Michael Kitteridge Thompson IV did or didn't mean when he was barking it out. All that matters is this album's magical hooks and breathless rush; song after song so memorable that Doolittle is like its own classic-rock station, with not an ad-break or three-testicle-voiced DJ in sight. All hits, all the time.
Record Label: 4AD
Release Date: April 18, 1989
