Doolittle

33⅓ Main Series #31

by Ben Sisario

The Pixies have had a career unlike any other in alternative rock, disappearing as not-quite-the-next-big-things only to become gods in absentia. Doolittle is their knotty masterpiece, the embodiment of the Pixies' abrasive, exuberant, enigmatic pop. Informed by exclusive interviews with the band, Sisario looks at the making of the album and its place in rock history, and studies its continued influence in light of the Pixies triumphant reunion.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Essays, Biography, Punk, Journalism

127 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 8, 2006

About the author

Ben Sisario is an American academic, author and journalist. He is a staff reporter for The New York Times, covering music and culture.

Sisario is a contributor to Blender, New York, Rolling Stone, Spin, New York City public-radio station WFUV and The Village Voice's annual Pazz & Jop music critics' poll. He is also a member of the teaching faculty at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, instructing courses on Rock Music in Historical Context and Writing for Popular Music.

Reviews

[A · Rating 4 out of 5]

FINALLY. I'm sorry, but anyone who has ever read any of the books in the Continuum 33 1/3 series knows they are almost without fail major, major disappointments -- an exorbitant $13 (!) for a steaming pile of skidmark-scented pretension written by a fourth-rate music blogger wanking off and off and off until they start chafing in the most obscure, uninteresting, and unbearable way possible. Really Continuum? Did the world really need an entire book (or even a full sentence) about Throbbing Gristle? Were The Smiths put on this earth to inspire bad short stories? Was Celine Dion's real purpose in life an excuse for straight people to pass judgement on camp? Was Dusty Springfield's musical output really best celebrated as a blanket excuse for every mistake white people have ever made throughout history, from Hitler to Seinfeld? Sorry, but in the words of one of the artists you have woefully neglected in your album selection, HELL TO THE NO.

But seriously folks, when we read these books we really just want one simple, nearly impossible to achieve thing: a really long, really interesting, really sexy New Yorker article about how the album came to be, and why, in a package that makes us look cool like a fucking Lester Bangs muthafucka on the subway while carrying it. This book delivers all that and more -- perfectly and succinctly -- striking the perfect balance among erudition, fanboy knob-jobbery, insider gossipy dish, and literariness without at all ruining the album or your morning commute. Indispensable for anyone who still turns the TV dial to 26 every afternoon after school/work wishing it were MTV in the 90s....

[Rob Adey · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's a bit of record-store-clerk dickery here, but I do like to know that Joey Santiago recorded some of his parts in a little cupboard.

[Sam Quixote · Rating 4 out of 5]

Music critic Ben Sisario takes a look at The Pixies’ 1989 record Doolittle, a masterpiece of rock music from one of the most interesting and influential bands of all time. In just 120 pages, Sisario manages to introduce us to the band members, how the band was formed, their influences, how the album was recorded, the subsequent years to follow, their breakup, their legacy, and their reformation, as well as a thorough breakdown of each individual track - it’s pretty impressive for a relatively short book.

If you were wondering whether the songs had complex, deep meanings or Charles Thompson (aka Black Francis aka Frank Black, the lead singer/songwriter of the band) had a message to put out with his music - they don’t and he doesn’t. In fact when Sisario meets up with Thompson for a three day interview in Thompson’s home in Oregon, very little is revealed about the album by Thompson (besides the fact that he doesn’t own a copy of it!) leaving Sisario to deconstruct and explain the tracks as he sees them. This isn’t actually a bad way of doing it given Sisario’s loquaciousness and amount of time he’s spent thinking about Doolittle, so that even if the band members themselves have little to contribute because they don’t or they want to maintain the album’s puzzling mystery, you at least get an interpretation of the album that’s worth reading.

So why doesn’t Thompson or anyone have anything to say about the record? Thompson was very into surrealism and this quote from David Byrne pretty much sums up his ethos: “Stop making sense and have rhythm. Or have groove. Or rhyme. Or use some interesting imagery. Or be very convoluted about what you’re trying to say, for the purpose of making it interesting for all of us.” Thompson was in his early twenties with little life experience - what was he going to write about, dropping out of college, whining about some girl he broke up with? No, he chose to write about biblical imagery and fantastic nightmares - none of it meant anything (or did it?) but it was better than the alternative. And music wise, he and the band just put together what they thought sounded interesting which worked really well.

There’s actually very little of interest in the recording of the album with the band going in having rehearsed the songs and knocking it out quickly. Their producer Gil Norton elongated some of the songs and Monkey Gone To Heaven was a conscious stab at commercial success (which was moderately achieved) but otherwise it’s a remarkably bland episode for such a mercurial record.

If the recording sounds boring, I was surprised at how even more boring the rest of the band were like in person. Joey Santiago comes across as a pleasant but very dull man with a limited vocabulary (“thingie” is a frequent word used) while Dave Lovering, having given up music, turns out to be doing magic these days! Kim Deal was the only member who refused to talk to Sisario though her rocky relationship with Thompson is discussed.

On its own, the recording of Doolittle is very uninteresting, even to fans, but the Thompson interviews are entertaining and funny at times. Sisario’s illuminating interpretations of the songs are the highlight of the book, giving the reader the layers that Thompson, whether knowingly or not, gave to the album with his lyrics. You have to be a big fan of the Pixies (like me) to enjoy this book and I did find it an interesting read of an album I listened to over and over when in high school. I listened to it again right after reading this and it still sounded awesome, and I understood Thompson’s approach to the album - write some cool lyrics, put it to the right chords, and, meaning or not, you’ve got music that’ll live forever. Thompson truly achieved his surrealistic vision of art and Doolittle is a true rock masterpiece - if you love the album, this book is definitely worth a read.

[Vicente Ribes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Otro gran libro de esta colección que analiza los discos más famosos del rock. En esta ocasión nos sumergimos de la mano de Ben Sisario y Frank Black entre los entresijos de la creación de Doolittle de los Pixies. Las influencias en la composición y lo que supuso para la banda con un posterior despegue comercial y aceptación de crítica y público.
Especialmente me ha gustado el último capítulo donde se analizan las temáticas de las canciones : historias de la biblia, compañeros de habitación que son unos weirdos, ecologia, mitos clásicos, sexo y muerte. Una combinación sacada de la mente retorcida y brillante de Black y que aquí disfrutamos en una colección que nunca decepciona.

[Adam Edwards · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's great to get some insight from most of the people behind the album, though the lack of input from Kim Deal is a huge shame. The access to the rest of the band is this book's selling point, really, particularly the interviews with Frank Black.

The track-by-track breakdown at the end of the book is good to read whilst listening to the album at the same time, too.

The only negative to the book is the author's voice throughout the whole thing - we're all big fans of the Pixies, hence reading the book, but the author is quite condescending towards other bands and genres etc. It's ok to love Doolittle without belittling other stuff but the author comes across as a bit of a stuck-up muso, which is a shame as otherwise it's a great read for fans of such a brilliant album.

[Ben · Rating 4 out of 5]

Yay for a good 33 1/3 book. This series has its moments that keep me coming back to read them, but not enough that I want to buy them.

I appreciate that the author doesn’t stretch to make connections or insights too often. I don’t get much out of people trying to read into an artist’s psyche from a few lines in a song. It also made me go back and listen (a lot) to some Pixies albums, which was highly enjoyable.

Definitely worth your time if you’re into Doolittle or the Pixies in general. But who would be interested in the Pixies but not this album? That wouldn’t make much sense.

[Ross Maclean · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve read a few in this series now and this is up there with the most straightforward. No sizeable personal deviations from the text, a pleasing amount of direct contribution from Charles Thompson (Black Francis) and a nuts-and-bolts breakdown of the production and the album from a technical perspective. An illuminating insight with more than enough analysis to avoid it slipping into dryness. Ends a little abruptly though, as it would have been nice to see some kind of conclusion to Sisario and Thompson’s road trip.

[Mike · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book should have been titled “The Pixies are Smart, but Ben Sisario thinks he's smarter.” I don't think there was literally an unnecessarily obscure reference on every page, but it certainly felt like it.

To be fair, in between telling everyone how smart he is, it managed to be a decently researched book. Not great, but passable.

[Mark]

This is pretty much what you want in a 33 1/3 book, although so many volumes in the series disappoint. Here you have a concise history of the band, an interview with Frank Black (driving around the west in his car with him) a really good analysis of the particular kind of surrealism that underlies the album, good notes on the music itself, and a fun and illuminating reading of the album song-by-song. I love the Pixies and while Dolittle is a complicated album it's probably the peak of the band's arching trajectory: nothing that comes after feels as pure to me and certainly that's due to the reality that given personalities the center could not hold.

[J.T. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was reading this at the same time of "Our Band Could Be Your Life", and although they're both books about bands, I much prefer the writing style of OBCBYL. That said, there was enough interesting information to sustain my interest. Although primary songwriter Thompson tends to claim that there's not much substance in his songwriting (he's greatly influenced by the dada art movement and repeatedly says he just comes up with words that sound good with the music), Sisario is able to find quite a bit of meaning and common themes throughout Pixies' work.

Pixies hold a special place in my heart for being one of the first bands to truly blow my mind. The trojan horse of "Here Comes Your Man" led me to the astoundingly terrifying "Tame", "Hey", "Gouge Away", etc. I remember calling my brother into my room to bear witness to the inhuman vocalizations Black Francis was making over the discordant sounds coaxed out of Santiago's tortured guitar. I was intrigued enough to keep listening to the album until something clicked and they became one of my favorite bands.

I'll go ahead and assume that anyone that picks up a 33 1/3 book is fairly obsessed with that album or band. So, if you're into Doolittle or Pixies in general, this is worth a read.

[lindy · Rating 4 out of 5]

These 33 1/3 books make me kind of scared because I always think they are going to change the way I listen to albums I really like, and so, it being one of my all-time favorite records and all, I approached the Doolittle book with caution. Hearing Doolittle for the first time when I was 15 was such a monumentally formative experience that I still remember what I was wearing that day, for cryin out loud. And I didn't really want some half-baked rock journalist destroying the mystique that still surrounds the album for me by saying, "Oh, Debaser means ______." Thankfully, Ben Sisaro did not do this. If anything, he opened up new things in the songs that I'd never thought about and made certain songs (especially "Gouge Away" and "There Goes My Gun") even creepier to me. Overall the book is excellent, if a little anti-Deal (I know she declined an interview and everything, but still). Also, the author comes off a bit too rock journalist-y at times, which I guess is not his fault, being a rock journalist and all, but he could lighten up on the use of the ol' hypenating-a-phrase-to-turn-it-into-an-adjective thing. Also, do you think this guy likes "Gigantic"? I couldn't exactly tell.

Bottom line, though, these books are consistenly great and I want to read more. Any suggestions?

A fun fact: in the earliest demo of "Debaser", in place of "un chien andalucia" Black Francis sang, "Shred! Apollonia", which is, sure, a lot less iconic and surreal, but a lot more Prince. Even so, I think he made the right choice.

[Kelly Head · Rating 5 out of 5]

This might be the best book of the series I have encountered so far. The author, Ben Sisario, does an incredible job of parsing the meaning of this Surrealist masterpiece. I say that it is Surrealist specifically because there are so many references to Dali and Buñuel, which I never caught beyond some of the obvious ones. Furthermore, it treats the Old Testament as a kind of Surrealist work, full of violence, sex, and death. "Uriah hit the crapper," "chained to the pillars," these are references to violence perpetrated by the "heroes" of the Bible, David and Samson. Unfortunately, there are also lots of images of violence against women, and I couldn't help but notice that Black Francis has a negative and jealous view of Kim Deal. "Wave of Mutilation" is about a real news story he read where a man drove his entire family into the ocean in a murder-suicide. As with many pieces of art, sometimes after investigating you find things that are disturbing about the nature of the work of art or the artist behind it, and that will ruin the work for you. I can't tell if this album is more about exploring the dark side of humanity or specifically targeting women. For instance, the album opens with "slicing up eyeballs," which is a reference to the movie Un Chien Andalou where a woman's eyeballs are sliced open quite graphically, but it closes with the "gouging away" of Samson's eyeballs by presumably Delilah.

[Rob · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm going to let you in on a little secret. If you follow my reviews you will have seen that there are many 33 1/3 volumes this year, many more than usual. This is because I have been forced at the gym to use a machine which simultaneously allows me to read and listen to music. Obviously there comes a moment when the pace and the strain makes it less comfortable to keep reading, but the music carries on. I spend several weeks inside the album in question, discovering it through the musings of a writer who also decided to dive deeper into the album than the average bear would.

The Pixies’ Doolittle was part of my university life, an expression of what music could be. And it still lives today, after many more successful albums have ceased to do so. Ben Sisario’s short volume asks why this knotty, gleefully abrasive 1989 album still crackles with energy long after a thousand bands have pinched its quiet-loud party tricks. The easier part of the answer is that they weren't just "party tricks". They were transitions that were felt into place. If you simply copy the order of LOUD-loud-quiet-LOUD, for example, you won't get it.

The spine of the book is a series of road-trip conversations with Charles Thompson (aka Black Francis/Frank Black), driving around Oregon and talking about surrealism, Catholic imagery, cheap hotels and the baffling afterlife of his old band. It’s a neat device: Doolittle as a landscape you pass through with its main architect sitting in the passenger seat, half-amused, half-detached, occasionally winding down the window to point at the wreckage. Side note: like many other writers who got the interview, he opens by telling us he has met one of the "nicest" rock stars. When that nice guy gets evasive we all start to ask ourselves questions. Thompson famously doesn’t go in for tidy “meanings” – he was young, he liked Buñuel, he liked the Bible, he liked screaming about slicing eyeballs over a cheerfully deranged Nuggets meets whatever-the-hell-we-want-to-add-to-it – and Sisario is already honest about how little true believer exegesis he’s going to get out of his subject.

That could have been a road pointing to the suburbs of nowhere. Sisario could have simply transcribed these shrugs and told us, with a sigh, that the ineffable mystery must remain ineffable. Instead he goes for something different: he leans into Thompson’s evasiveness while quietly building his own case for what Doolittle does, if not what every line “means”. It's almost like he's whispering asides to us over Thompson's shifty shoulder. He drills down to a toggling between the micro – chord changes, vocal tics, that cavernous sense of doom that underpins “Monkey Gone to Heaven” – and the macro: where this record sat in the late-80s alt-rock ecosystem, how it prefigured the mainstreaming of weirdness that the whole grunge movement and beyond would cash in on a few years later.

Structurally, the book is almost cleaved in two. The first half is an oral-history-ish narrative: how the band formed, the jump from Surfer Rosa to Doolittle, the touring grind, the eventual fracture and the long spell as “gods in absentia”, a phrase Sisario borrows from the album’s posthumous reputation. Joey Santiago and David Lovering appear in snatches; Kim Deal largely in absentia, her refusal to participate becoming its own silent commentary.

Then Sisario hits the track-by-track stretch. If the driving scenes are hopeful wide shots, these are sharper close-ups: “Debaser” as the whole Pixies formula boiled down to two minutes of paranoid glimmer; “Tame” as sex meets menace for a panicked play date; “Hey” as the moment where the band’s Catholic guilt and rock bravado accidentally coalesced into a new kind of hymn. He’s particularly good on the record’s sense of architecture – how the sequencing tilts between brutality and sweetness, how the band keep undermining themselves just when they’re about to sound straightforward. You come away hearing the album as something much more deliberate than the “weird kids stumble into greatness” story suggests.

One of the pleasures of the 33 1/3 series is seeing how each writer chooses to sell their shot. Some entrench themselves in the full theory seminar, others lean into personal memoir. Sisario leans, gently, towards illuminated reportage. For his persona he chooses very well-briefed guide pointing out details in a painting you thought you knew. That makes this one of the more approachable entries in the series – there's less to stumble over – but it also means that when the band themselves are being a bit dull, it's hard to keep up the narrative energy.

The limitations are built into the source material. This was never a band given to theatrical self-mythologising or even a simple truth when asked a straight question; that all went into the songs. The road trips are curiously uneventful and the anecdotes modest. Apart from the odd moment of lucid mea culpa, no one wants to say too much and Kim doesn't want to say anything at all. We have stepped into an anti-matter urban cul-de-sac.

But if you see Doolittle as a set of puzzles – why does this odd, violent, often opaque record feel so alive? – then Sisario starts to come up with some goods. His discussions of Thompson’s surrealist influences, his fondness for biblical apocalypse over confessional diary-entry lyrics, and the way those tendencies played into and even formed a broader late-80s alternative landscape, all help clarify why so many later bands have ended up sounding like diluted versions of this subtly see-sawing noise without ever quite matching its grand galloping charge.

Does this book add to the album you're listening to? Absolutely. “Wave of Mutilation” becomes a small thesis on American wreckage; “Gouge Away” the closing track hangover from the manic glee that went before it. "Monkey Gone to Heaven" is massive and faux-liturgical. Perhaps this is who we really are. There's a sense that many things lie outside the scope of the allowable memory and then along come the songs themselves to make the quest for more "meaning" seem totally chimerical. Almost more than any other album of that time, this is a product of instinct and memory, all sloshed together into a pre-punk and post-punk blender, seasoned with lashings of spiritual abandon and tight-lipped indie omertà. Like the art of, say, Basquiat, breaking it down too much would surely do a disservice to all of us.

But reminding us of its many graces is more than welcome.

[Luka Pajković · Rating 4 out of 5]

Solidno štivo o jednom od najluđih indie pop rock albuma, knjiga jako kompaktno prolazi kroz Pixiese prije i pokle ove ploče, a opet uspije dovoljno vrimena posvetiti ploči samoj i pismama na njoj i snimanju i touranju itd itd. Većinom je sugovornik Black, muški ostatak benda je prisutan u pokojem pasusu, a madam Deal nije tila pričat za ovu knjigu. Šteta, jer čujemo samo jednu stranu priče i to vague o sukobu koji je označio i raspad Pixiesa, a naravno da je uvijek zanimljivo čut takve saucy tračeve. No, nebitno, sve ča je ovdje napisano je manje više okej (autor doduše malo izgubi kompas tijekom song-by-song dijela knjige di previše onanira u superlativima) i daje novo svijetlo na sve ča ovaj album predstavlja i na sve ča ga čini.

[Oisín · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was hoping that unlike Gina Arnold's even worse 33 1/3 submission on Exile in Guysville, this would live up to its respective album. Sadly, the series continues to disappoint.

At first I thought the book's main flaw would be Ben Sisario's habit of inserting himself and his opinions into the work (his description of Jack Black as a "cool celebrity" is unforgivable) when he and his writing are not particularly charismatic or compelling. However, as the book progresses and Sisario disappears, I realised that his writing, when confined solely to reporting on the actions and opinions of more interesting people, is decent.

So for the next 50 pages I found myself enjoying reading about Joey Santiago's time in a dorm similar to a Roman bath house, or David Lovering's inability to remember anything. And then the true shortcoming of the book emerges; its structure. Sisario chooses to begin the whole thing with a description of his meeting and subsequent conversations with Charles Thompson (Black Francis). Sisario interviews almost everyone involved with album, but it's his time with Thompson that form the bedrock of the book. This does not inherently doom Sisario - Thompson is undoubtedly the creative powerhouse most responsible for The Pixies becoming what they were, and he should certainly be at the heart of any attempt to parse their music. This only truly becomes a problem when it becomes apparent that Sisario has surrendered the driving seat of the work entirely to Thompson, everything he says is taken as gospel truth and his version of events are never problematised. I realise that any attempt to provide a balanced account of the events surrounding the album was dealt a severe blow before it began in Kim Deal's refusal to do any interviews with Sisario, but to me it seems to serve not as an obstacle to him but a free pass to do what he really wants, and curl up at Black Francis's feet and lap up anything he says. This becomes particularly harmful to the book when Sisario decides to throw basic facts to the wind to adorn Thompson with every accomplishment of The Pixies. For example:

'Strictly speaking, "Debaser" is not nearly as inventive as move of Thompson's earlier material, even the classically simple "Gigantic," with its libidinous tides of noise, is more interestingly constructed.'

Sisario seems to have forgotten that "Gigantic" was written almost entirely by Kim Deal, Thompson only contributed the bass riff and the word "Gigantic" to the song. Similarly, when discussing "Silver," the only song Deal (or anyone but Thompson, for that matter) receives a writing credit for, Thompson dismisses the song as "throwaway." Sisario breathlessly backs him up in his assessment; 'And, we gotta admit, Charles was right about those lyrics. They really are throwaways.' Vom.

Overall, the book is of use as a tool to condense all the interviews the band have done with other sources into one unit. However, any original contributions are difficult to appreciate when they're filtered through Ben Sisario's desperation to align himself with Black Francis. He desperately needed some critical distance from his primary source, and he fails miserably to establish it. Whilst, for the most part, Sisario is successful in keeping his hero worship out of the surface of his writing, his pining for Thompson's approval leaves hastily concealed scars that run directly to the core of the work, leaving us with little more than a book on Doolittle by Black Francis and the Pips.

[fashion castillo · Rating 4 out of 5]

nothing brings me more joy than reading about an album in a way that perfectly captures feelings I couldn’t put into words myself!!

🚨 imma geek from here on, sorry for my soapbox 🚨

listening to debaser for the first time altered my brain chemistry. one of those songs I’ll never get tired of.

however! surfer rosa will always be my favorite pixies album. if you can listen to broken face and hear the genius, let’s be friends. 33 minutes of melodic weirdness and i love every second of it.

sisario says, “Surfer Rosa established the band as one of the brightest lights in underground rock, but Doolittle improved on it, showing the intricacy, depth, and breadth of vision they were capable of.”

also!! interesting to hear religions impact on thompsons songwriting — specifically his obsession with the old testament lol

really appreciated the in-depth history followed by a track by track breakdown. (recognized a name or two thanks to pinkard’s book on shoegaze, lots of 4ad and ivo watts-russell mention)

incredibly thorough review. goes through thompsons writing process, surrealist views, deal and lovering’s impact on the band, etc etc etc.

my hottest take: two bands i find revolutionary are the beatles and the pixies (this is a pretty biased review in case you didn’t realize)

cobain literally said he just wanted to rip off the pixies… yes nirvana had the cultural impact to turn 90s radio from hair metal to grunge but really they were just trying to copy the pixies and failing (in the best way possible!)

alas, i digress. the book is great and you should read it.

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's that classic saying, "never meet your heroes", and I worried there might a similar warning out there, "never read about how one of your favorite albums ever was made." But I'm glad I read this entertaining, mostly informative, and oddly structured little book. It describes the backstory of the Pixies, a few "where are they now" anecdotes, and a breakdown of the songs and structure of the album "Doolittle". There's also fun moments like road trip adventures with Charles Thompson and a cheesy magic trick from drummer-turned-magician David Lovering. I feel like I might have related to this album even more in college if I'd known the story behind some songs (like "Crackity Jones" being about a crazy roommate!) I'm also relieved to learn that other songs are genuinely surreal -- stories inspired by interesting combinations of words, and/or random news stories. I can't say I understand all the music references about key changes and chords... but it's interesting to learn about the band's inspiration on the one hand, and what musical elements made their sound so unique on the other. I'm disappointed that we get little input from Joey Santiago of the band (who apparently doesn't speak much) nor from Kim Deal (who apparently wouldn't talk to the author.) Without those voices, I feel like we don't get a full story about this album. But then, do I really want all the mysteries revealed? Nah, let's let this album keep some of its secrets.

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ben Sisario's writing style is kind of juvenile and made me roll my eyes a few times, but the information and song analysis, drawn from interviews with Charles Thompson, Joey Santiago, and David Lovering, is really valuable. I've been a Pixies fan since high school but I hadn't given the lyrics much thought until now. The book deepened my appreciation of Doolittle by parsing the meanings and themes of each individual song, backed by Charles's recollections, and how these are supported by the arrangements and production. By contrast, Fool the World by Josh Frank and Caryn Ganz, another great book on the Pixies, is useful for biographical information but doesn't give much attention to the actual music. All in all, I highly recommend Sisario's book for Pixies fans.

[Jesse · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty informative, even though a lot of it is Black Francis shrugging his shoulders and giving half-answers to what things mean and how they were made. I'm in awe about all the different ways the music was described, he really managed to keep it interesting, even though he's essentially describing the same things over and over. Overall, a fun little book. I learned a lot about what meaning there was in the album, because I've never paid much attention to the lyrics at all. And getting a super quick 101 level education on the history of the Pixies was also great.

[Timothy Minneci · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another solid installment in the 33 1/3 book series. Glad the author could talk to most of the band, as sometimes these books are based more second-hand accounts and outside opinions rather than the person or people who made the music. That said, there were a few more personal interjections and judgments by the author than I would have preferred, although I'm happy he went song by song through the album and discuss the lyrical content with depth.

[Nicole M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice! Pixies' album Doolittle played a huge part in adolescence, and to read a book exalting a favorite work of art always feels so satisfying. However, it's not just some silly drooling panegyric--it's a legitimate investigation and critical look into an album by a legendary band that came and went as a blip in musical history. A lot of information is given, and yet is also assumes a lot of prior knowledge about the group. It's perfect for the die-hard Pixies fan --myself--and has surprisingly beautiful prose. A very nice edition in the 33 1/3 series.

[Ted Gurley · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read the 33 1/3 series to expose myself to new music or learn the back story. This edition did both well. While still not a fan of the Pixies, Ben Sasario told the story well. It’s actually one of the few in the series that has a first person perspective of the lead singer and writer. Sassario takes us on his road trip with Charles Thompson. Well crafted book.

[Adam Parrilli · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great album. Too much discussion of surrealism and lyrical analysis and strokery for my liking. There is some good writing and plenty of interesting anecdotes from producer Gil Norton. (He would also helm Bossanova and Trompe Le Monde, as well as the great Catherine Wheel Chrome) A very quick read.

[Jonny Brick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fine appraisal of the band's major-label debut, which had three Huge Smashes (Debaser, Here Comes Your Man, Monkey Gone To Heaven) and plenty of mood pieces. The author chats to the lyricist, coming away with scraps and morsels, and is very good on the recording process and the move from scrappy indie kids to big leaguers. The band's status is secure.

[Robbie Shepherd · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty awesome quick review of the Pixies’ history. Cute framework (driving around with Frank Black). Very little about the making of Doolittle is factual since the Pixies that DO agree to to be interviewed don’t seem to remember much. It’s… a fun quick read. Don’t expect it to blow your mind if you want to hear objective specifics about the album.

[Stewart Mitchell · Rating 4 out of 5]

If this was a full length book that spanned the entire Pixies career arc, it would be absolutely excellent. As it stands, it’s an insightful reminder of why Doolittle is one of the best pieces of rock music ever recorded.

[Jennifer Fenn · Rating 5 out of 5]

My favorite of the 33 1/3 books so far! Just the right balance of cultural reflection, history of the band, and a track by track analysis of the songs. Fans of the band will enjoy very much!

[Mark · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘‘Twas fine.

[Rob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some useful interview material with Thompson but the book is, alas, like the band: Kim Deal-lite

[Cudipeich Grijander · Rating 4 out of 5]

Información muy interesante sobre cómo se construyó este disco, qué hay detrás de las letras de cada cancion y cómo se inspira Frank Black para componer sus canciones.