CREEM ONLINE: Pixies — Wave of Mutilation

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Dusk in the California desert found the reunited indie legends in front of an excited, roaring mass of music disciples that stretched on forever. Kicking off their set, the Pixies tore through "Bone Machine" and "U-Mass" with reckless abandon. Playing like seasoned veterans, they didn't sound like a band that broke up more than a decade ago. By the time twilight was upon the crowd, it seemed to be either a beautiful dream come true, or a harsh reality.

Unlike Sonic Youth, they never had an obnoxious avant-garde period. They had no mediocre comeback album á la Television or the Stone Roses.

Frozen in time, the Pixies were a rare breed, like the Beatles, the Velvet Underground and the Clash (if you can overlook the latter two's albums after key members were gone), of rock bands whose permanent record bore no bad marks.

Pixies
Wave Of Mutilation: The Best Of The Pixies
2004 4AD

While every diehard fan will likely have compiled their ultimate Pixies mix long ago, compilations such as Wave of Mutilation aren't for them anyhow. This is a quick-fix, an introduction to one of the best, most entertaining, experimental and influential bands to come out of the '80s. While the Pixies, like the Velvet Underground, are more of an "albums band," if you're looking for a single disc, Wave is an adequate collection.

While indie assholes such as me can spend an annoying amount of time in the record store arguing the inclusion of certain songs for others, there isn't a bad song in the batch, and most of the songs included are the top of the pops. Opening with the explosive "Bone Machine," the album proves their versatility, and influence, with tracks like "Velouria" (Weezer, who by no coincidence covered the song), the pop-friendly "Gigantic" (Swirlies), and songs that prove beyond a shadow of a doubt they built the template Nirvana would follow. In addition, there's the layered, pop friendly "Here Comes Your Man," the haunting "Where Is My Mind?," and the reckless abandon of "U-Mass."

And despite what the good folks at All Music will tell you, chronological order is not necessarily a good thing. In this case, it makes for an odd, stiff listen that in the case of the Pixies, doesn't work as well as say, carefully sequenced tracks that could have created a better musical flow.

Regardless of that minute complaint, and the fact you should already own all of their albums, this is more or less the best of the best, and proof of the band's influence and legacy.

—Luke Hackney
May 2004

The band began way back in the mid-'80s when Frank Black, once Black Francis, met guitarist Joey Santiago, and they placed an ad looking for a bassist who liked Hüsker Dü, and Peter, Paul & Mary… Kim Deal, or Mrs. John Murphy, is who they got.

I'm not sure if they were ever a cross between the hardcore post-punk outfitt and the folk trio, but what they were, was great.

Even though they were making some of the best, most powerful, intriguing, influential and sometimes-beautiful rock and roll of the time, they didn't sell all that well. Their videos were, for lack of a better term, crap, and they weren't hitting the radio waves all that often. Even when Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Jane's Addiciton and everyone else was, no less.

The oft-overlooked Pixies achieved minimal success the first time around, but were much bigger and more important than any sales figure would have one believe. Maybe they, like the aforementioned Velvets, were too good… a band, as Gary Smith wrote, "while not a lot people bought their albums, everyone who did started a band. I think this is largely true about the Pixies."

Kurt Cobain put a wedge in the door, but it was the Pixies that kicked the fucker open ("Basically, I was ripping off the Pixies," Cobain once said of "Smells Like Teen Spirit"). Their sound cast a long shadow over a great deal of what was said to be so great about the '90s music scene.

And then they hated each other. And with an "Adios, Amigos," it was over… and new projects were born. "Last Splash" was a hit, at least commercially, and Black, whose audience was reduced to a cult following, was oft hit or miss.

Then, almost out of the blue, talks and rumors began of a possible reunion.

Flash forward to present, at the Coachella music festival, a pit stop on their tour. They're playing Lollapalooza, it is announced a few hours before at a press conference in a small tent. They'd been practicing 40 songs to choose from at a secret locale, guitarist/vocalist Frank Black tells the huddled reporters.

"We had tacos," Black added.

Apparently drummer David Lovering attempted to go to Coachella a year prior.

"I came with this crazy girl who said she had tickets but we got here and it turned out she didn't have tickets," Lovering explained, "She got in somehow and I ended up waiting outside listening to music for like, three hours."

Yet they were here now, all of them, reunited, and it feels so good. They watch Harry Potter at night.

"Kim's choice," said Black.

And while it wasn't evident why they were playing together, or whether or not they were trying to cash in on their legacy, or whether or not Mrs. John Murphy secretly thinks Black is as dumb and fat and ugly as he is bald, or even whether they'd release new material and if so how good would it be, watching them on stage, it didn't matter.

It didn't even matter that they were part of a two day music-fest that featured Beck, Radiohead, The Cure, The Flaming Lips, Belle and Sebastian and Andy Dick getting busted for either being a pothead or unfunny… or that celebrities were hidden amongst the audience because at that moment the only people I really wanted there were there, on the stage. As the audience sang along to "Where Is My Mind?," I knew I wasn't alone in the crowd of over 50,000.

For Gen-Xers searching for an icon, there's no need to find it in the splattered remains of Cobain but rather the Pixies, who've made a comeback without new members, a big-budget video, pyrotechnic tour or rushed album.

And because of that, all that can be said is Amen.

Amen.

— Luke Hackney
June 2004

Photos by Sheryl Stevoff