So why is Pixies’ Surfer Rosa on this best 1,000 albums ever thing?
Surfer Rosa includes two of my least favorite Pixies songs.
How’s that for an opener for an album of 13 songs that sits close to the edge of the Top 100 of the best 1,000 albums ever?
Well, I’ll step that back a bit. “Where Is My Mind?” is arguably the Pixies’ best-known song (it has over one billion plays on Spotify, over four times as many as the second most popular song, “Here Comes Your Man”), but it’s simply a song that I can live without. Maybe I just got tired of it, along with the Fight Club hoopla and hearing it too many times close to Last Call during my long ago misbegotten youth days?
Okay, if you’re curious, the other least favorite is “Tony’s Theme,” which I’m listening to as I write these words and I’m actually kind of digging. Which, really, just shows that I’m a massive Pixies fan, but the part on this one that grates on me a bit is when Kim Deal chimes in to let us know that this song is about a superhero named Tony… it’s called “Tony’s Theme”!
But it’s also kind of great that I’m not obsessed with every song on Surfer Rosa because it takes wild and wildly weird swings and most of them totally work, and smashingly well at that.
For example, I am bonkers obsessed with the gloriously screechy and delicious noise punk that is “Something Against You.” I’m not typically a noise anything guy – especially these days! – but man oh man this one simply crushes.
Less screechy (okay, slightly!) but just as glorious: the delightful, fun, and strange “River Euphrates.” On some days, it’s my favorite Pixies song.
That’s the ride that Surfer Rosa takes you on.
Right down the river Euphrates, dig? On a tire, say.
I actually prefer the sublime live Frank Black acoustic version of “Oh My Golly!” ever so slightly more than the frantic punk rock studio version on Surfer Rosa, but either way it’s a Top 5 Pixies track for me.
Heather Phares from All Music does a great job of pointing out that “Cactus” is “kinky, T. Rex-inspired.” It is that, but it’s also revved-up Pixies alt rock/punk, with the special twist that only producer Steve Albini gets out of the bands he works with in his best collaborations.
And then “Gigantic,” fronted sweetly and yet powerfully by Kim Deal, proves that the Pixies can craft outstanding mainstream-leaning rockers when they’re of the mind.
“Brick Is Red,” the album closer, is a slightly mellower and more expansive version of the Pixies than is the norm, and reminds me much of the direction that Frank Black would embark on in his solo career (where he’d go on to produce some of my favorite albums of all time).
Which is to say: stay tuned.
Some stats & info about Pixies – Surfer Rosa
- What kind of musical stylings does this album represent? Rock Music, Alternative Rock, College Rock, Punk Bands, Boston Bands
- Rolling Stone’s greatest 500 albums ranking – #390
- All Music’s rating – 5 out of 5 stars
- When was Surfer Rosa released? 1988
- My ranking, the one you’re reading right now – #109 out of 1,000
Pixies’ Surfer Rosa on Spotify
A lyrical snippet from Pixies’ Surfer Rosa that’s evocative of the album in some way, maybe
Let’s ride a tire down the river Euphrates.
What does the “best 1,000 albums ever” mean and why are you doing this?
Yeah, I know it’s audacious, a little crazy (okay, maybe a lot cray cray), bordering on criminal nerdery.
But here’s what it’s NOT: a definitive list of the Greatest Albums of All-Time. This is 100% my own personal super biased, incredibly subjective review of what my top 1,000 albums are, ranked in painstaking order over the course of doing research for nearly a year, Rob from High Fidelity style. Find out more about why I embarked on a best 1,000 albums ever project.