Punk Rock Monday

You will never ever over-estimate how important the Pixies were to my coming of age. While I can listen to every single track on every single album they released, it's obvious that Surfer Rosa and the Come On Pilgrim EP are head and shoulders above the rest of the catalog. The latter of those two recordings was unlike anything I had heard when I was 14 years old.

"Caribou"


"Levitate Me"


Surfer Rosa still strikes me in its rawness and irony-soaked aggressiveness. There's a furious urgency to their tales of bizarrely sexualized violence that nonetheless fails to hide the playful "yeah, we're singing about priests molesting altar boys" vibe.

"Something Against You"


Also from Rosa, this is from their 2004 reunion tour, "Bone Machine"


The YouTube has a pretty big collection of clips for the Pixies, including some not real good stuff from '91 where the tensions within the band are blatantly obvious (especially when you have the '88 performances for comparison).

Did I mention how much I love the fucking Pixies? Because I really do.