Top 102 Albums⁺ No 37
Come on Pilgrim - Pixies
"I said, I want to be a singer like Lou Reed.
I like Lou Reed, she said, sticking her tongue in my ear."
On the day that Pope Francis I is elected it seems a good time to celebrate his antithesis, Black Francis and his mischievous elfin band.
I remember when this came out it was an astonishment. 4AD was the label of artsy askance records by the likes of The Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance, This Mortal Coil and Throwing Muses. Often beautiful, even thrilling. It was also the label of the dark, intense and explosively direct Birthday Party. The Pixies swung between both. Huge riffs, spanish phrases, mixing the obtuse and the direct, the childish and the sophisticated, they seemed like the only band in 1987. The album, with it's oddly disturbing cover became a marker. (Indeed, for some, Vaughan Oliver's covers were reason enough to buy many 4AD releases.)
