doolittle

The Pixies expanded their sonic pallet with the surreal mix of polished surf pop, primal punk noise, country & western, reggae, and brooding balladry that comprise this alternative rock and roll animal.  The band had built up a reputation for their aggressive alternative sound with their debut EP 'Come On Pilgrim' and its full length followup 'Surfer Rosa'.  For their next album they decided to work with producer Gil Norton, who also engineered the sessions at Downtown Recorders in Boston, Massachusetts and Carriage House Studios in Stamford, Connecticut.   The album features Black Francis on vocals and rhythm guitar;  Kim Deal on bass guitar, vocals, and slide guitar on "Silver";  Joey Santiago on lead guitar and backing vocals;  David Lovering on drums, lead vocal on "La La Love You", and bass guitar on "Silver";   with the addition of Arthur Fiacco and Ann Rorich on cello, and Karen Karlsrud and Corine Metter on violin for "Monkey Gone to Heaven". 

The working title for the album was 'Whore'; but Black Francis decided to change it too 'Doolittle' from a lyric in the song "Mr. Grieves":   "I thought people were going to think I was some kind of anti-Catholic or that I'd been raised Catholic and trying to get into this Catholic naughty-boy stuff...A monkey with a halo, calling it Whore, that would bring all kinds of shit that wouldn't be true. So I said I'd change the title."

 Dave Lovering    “We didn’t feel like we were making a masterpiece.  I guess I can see that it’s a classic now. At the time of its release, I just thought of it as another Pixies album. It was the next thing we were doing...When we did 'Doolittle' with Gil, the production became more polished and pro.  The songs were more accessible, too, which just might have been where we were going as a band. Not to say that I didn’t like it; in fact, I was extremely proud of 'Doolittle' when I first heard it being played back. I couldn’t believe it was us – it sounded so big and accomplished...It’s a great record.  After all these years, it’s like it hasn’t aged. Time sort of caught up with it.”

 Kim Deal reflects:    "It’s OK actually. I think Charles’ singing is really strong, I think it’s a lot better now. I think his singing is really good, so…maybe if he couldn’t hit the notes the songs wouldn’t have aged very well. Some singers write really high when they’re younger...It felt different but it was like… we were gone from our home. I can’t even remember what state we recorded it in now."

Black Francis AKA Frank Black AKA Charles Michael Kittridge Thompson IV considers:  "I’m very much about the moment, not necessarily in my life, but in my music. When I’m making music, or performing music or writing music, I’m just very much about what I’m doing at the moment, and it doesn’t require different hats really, it doesn’t require different ways of thinking. For example, I really like playing with musicians that are really great, but I also really like playing with musicians who are not great — they’re just simple musicians because the goal is the same. As long as everyone understands, we have to make this moment, we have to make this song or performance as good as we can, and you can be really rough about it or you can be really inept about it, but there’s a spirit of 'We’ve gotta make this good' — as long as everyone’s on that page, it doesn’t really matter...It might be a nostalgic [thing] for certain members of the audience, but it’s not really [nostalgic] for me. It’s part of my repertoire, my canon of songs; it’s what I do. It’s not like in 1989 I was trying a different kind of music altogether, or something that was about the moment in fashion. It’s hard for me to think about it in terms of nostalgia. I think that it’s all gotten so blurry anyway with all of the different pop genres. Everything is essentially so derivative that I think it’s pretty rare that you get a totally new form of popular music.  I mean, think about something like hip-hop and rap records, for example: There are a couple of hip-hop records that I’m very familiar with that came out, like, 25 years ago. They were, like, doing the rap 25 years ago, and that has become such a big part of the mainstream cultural vocabulary. It’s hard to say, 'What really is new?' There may be new tags, but what popular music form would you say — I’m not saying there aren’t any — but to me, the last new thing that I can remember that was really, truly new, is rap and hip-hop music...I like the Iggy Pop quote: 'It’s all disco.' I totally get it, I totally get it, it’s all disco."

'Doolittle' became the band's biggest success, going to number ninety-eight in the US (eventually being certified platinum), sixty-six in France, fifty-three in the Netherland, eighteen in the Netherlands, and number eight in the UK (where it has been certified gold).  It has sold over a million copies worldwide and has been cited as one of the greatest albums of all time by numerous music publications.  







http://www.pixiesmusic.com/‎










"Here Comes Your Man"



"Monkey Gone to Heaven" 



"Debaser" was inspired by the silent surrealist short film by the Spanish director Luis Buñuel and artist Salvador Dalí 'Un Chien Andalou'  (An Andalusian Dog) from 1929.   
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVyS9JwtFoQ









'Doolittle' 
full album 



All tracks were written by Black Francis, except where noted.

"Debaser"  – 2:52
"Tame"  – 1:55
"Wave of Mutilation"  – 2:04
"I Bleed"  – 2:34
"Here Comes Your Man"  – 3:21
"Dead"  – 2:21
"Monkey Gone to Heaven"  – 2:56
"Mr. Grieves"  – 2:05
"Crackity Jones"  – 1:24
"La La Love You"  – 2:43
"No. 13 Baby"  – 3:51
"There Goes My Gun"  – 1:49
"Hey"  – 3:31
"Silver" (Francis/Deal)  – 2:25
"Gouge Away"  – 2:45



demos