Come on Pilgrim

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About four years ago I moved from New York to Arizona and found myself listening to the the band's last two albums—1990's Bossanova and 1991’s Trompe Le Monde—a lot. It’s true what they say about the desert when they say it looks like the moon. Plants and animals seem proud to have survived the odds. Bossanova and Trompe Le Monde make sense to me here, when it’s 110 degrees by lunch and the concrete ripples in the heat. They’re narrower in scope than Doolittle, and have a tough, inorganic presence, like burnished chrome. In March 1987, Pixies entered Boston's Fort Apache Studios with Fort Apache owner/record producer Gary Smith to record a demo tape. The resulting 17-song cassette, later dubbed " The Purple Tape", eventually found its way to Ivo Watts-Russell, president and co-founder of the influential British record label 4AD. Pixies' manager Ken Goes was also the manager of Throwing Muses, who had become the first American band to sign to 4AD a year earlier. Goes passed Pixies' demo tape on to Watts-Russell, who walked the streets of New York listening to it on his Walkman and "absolutely adored it from day one". [7] Despite initial hesitance to sign the band, seeing as how 4AD had already signed an American band from the same manager, he was convinced to do so by his girlfriend, Deborah Edgeley, a secretary for 4AD. [7]

Pixies Titles/Names". Alec Eiffel. Archived from the original on 2019-04-01 . Retrieved 2007-04-15.The Record: Unfinished Business". Capital Public Radio. February 3, 2015 . Retrieved April 16, 2019. But I think what keeps more people from listening to them is that they seem like albums that don’t care whether you listen to them or not. Bossanova is sweeter than Trompe, but its sweetness exists at an impossible distance. “She’s my fave, undressing in the sun,” Francis whispers on the cryptic miniature, “Ana.” “Return to sea—bye. Forgetting everyone.” Later, on “Havalina,” he spots a javelina—an ornery, boar-like animal not uncommon here—walking across a plain. The music is a slow dance between celestial bodies, heavenly but melancholic. So he sees the boar, and in two short lines, the song is over. Late Pixies songs are triumphs of private epiphany: Small, diamond-bright moments that flash in someone’s eyes and then disappear forever.

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Licensed courtesy of The University of Massachusetts Lowell and WUML 91.5 FM. Mixed live to stereo broadcast, 15 Dec. 1986, on the WJUL radio program Live From the Fallout Shelter.