I was living in Arizona many years ago and my good friend Biggles came for a visit. We were out and about, enjoying a cool beverage on a typical hot night on some restaurant patio, when B asked me if I had heard the new Pixies album yet. When I told him I hadn’t, he said “you’ve got to go get it.” “OK” I said; “NOW!” he insisted.
There happened to be a record store near us, so we popped in and bought a cassette of “Trompe Le Monde.” Back to the car, we loaded up the tape and hit the road. What I heard that evening driving around the desert was simply amazing. While I sometimes like music on first listen, more often than not it takes several passes for me to properly evaluate what I’m hearing. This was one of those instances where I knew immediately I was listening to genius.
In particular, what would have been side one of the cassette immediately blew me away. For those of you raised in the digital age, that would be tracks 1 (“Trompe Le Monde”) through 8 (“Letter to Memphis”). I’ll go so far as to say it may be the most perfect side of a record ever. And if it’s not, it’s certainly in the conversation. The flow of these eight songs is sublime, full of tension building and release, and there’s even a Jesus & Mary Chain cover. Lyrically they make some fun of punk (“The Sad Punk”) and college students (“U-Mass”), which I found amusing because I imagine that was a large part of the Pixies core audience (hey, wait…). It’s all over in less than twenty minutes, but it goes by in what seems like about five. To this day it gets my heart racing when I listen. It’s a pure blast of energy, so you can skip the coffee.
To me it also perfectly encapsulated all the strengths of the Pixies – great musicianship all around, loud distorted guitars, interesting and/or humorous lyrics, catchy hooks, and lots of change-ups within songs. The vocals range from sweet to screaming. While you really can’t go wrong with any of the Pixies records, or even the second half of this one (where they also have some fun with the goths on “Subbacultcha” – “I was all dressed in black, she was all dressed in black…”), for me this is the pinnacle. Simply amazing.