The end product is a set of songs that buzz with a frightening feral energy. “I remember doing Vamos and throwing things at the guitar, I want to say they were tennis balls,” Santiago told.
Surfer rosa full#
He may have been a grumpy critical presence who baulked at the title of producer and later described Pixies as “blandly entertaining college rock”, but former Black Flag member Steve Albini’s stark yet restlessly inventive production is vital to Surfer Rosa‘s singular sound.Īlbini deployed his full bag of tricks inside Q Division, telling both guitarists to use metal picks, experimenting with running Francis’ vocals through distortion pedals, recording Kim Deal’s Gigantic vocal in the bathroom, leaving in snatches of studio conversations and encouraging Santiago to get creative. Image: Frans Schellekens / Redferns Blandly entertaining college rock “There’s a lot of half-steps, a lot of chords that don’t theoretically go with the key, but it seems to work.” “The music is unconventional,” Francis told. Witness the thrilling sense of discord in the riff and churning unison bends on Where Is My Mind? That song’s solo, too, is unusual, Santiago playing notes from the B minor pentatonic scale over major chords. It just wasn’t my thing.”įrancis and Santiago were ripping up the rule book, messing with song structures and pairing chords and riffs that sat uneasily, Santiago’s anti-solo stance at the heart of many of the album’s most memorable moments. But in the back of my mind I was like, ‘I don’t care’. “The only thing that was impressive about it for me was the speed. “Mainstream guitar had a lot of typewriting skills,” said Santiago. Try to imagine Gigantic without her simple yet immediately evocative contribution, for example.īoth players were determined to carve their own niche, too, rejecting the histrionic hair metal tropes that dominated rock music in 1987. Francis’ more controlled rhythm playing is a steadying counterpoint to Santiago’s wantonly unorthodox approach, while Deal’s chugging basslines bring a melodic levity to the seething brew. Wantonly unorthodoxĬentral to the chilling brilliance of this strange, unsettling album is the balance and contrast between the three main players – Francis (real name Charles Thompson), Philippines-born lead guitarist Joey Santiago and bassist Kim Deal. Countless hours of rehearsals in a sewage-soaked basement rehearsal room enabled the whole thing to be wrapped up in just 10 days, costing $10,000 – with 4AD paying Albini a flat fee of $1,500. By the time Pixies went into Boston’s Q Division Studios to record Surfer Rosa with producer Steve Albini in December 1987, they were a tightly wound unit. 4AD boss Ivo Watts-Russell was impressed enough to sign the band and put out eight songs from the demo as the EP Come On Pilgrim. Surfer Rosa‘s origins lie in the Purple Tape, a demo recorded over six days in March 1987 using $1,000 borrowed from singer and guitarist Black Francis’ father. Writing on the album’s 30th anniversary in 2018, NME‘s Mark Beaumont recalled, “All I heard was an unhinged flamenco punk maniac barking and yelping over some of the most beautifully brutal and cruelly melodic songs I’d ever heard. Yet Pixies‘ debut album is widely regarded as one of the most influential records of the modern era, its primal aggression and quiet-loud dynamics doing much to inspire the grunge movement that followed.ĭavid Bowie called the album, which went Gold on both sides of the Atlantic, “the most compelling music outside of Sonic Youth made in the entire 80s” it blew PJ Harvey‘s mind Kurt Cobain admitted to ripping off Surfer Rosa the artists not yet known as Smashing Pumpkins and Radiohead were listening closely, too. It’s fair to say Surfer Rosa is not an easy listen. An explosion of Catholic repression and a pair of “rough and ready” guitarists twisting together the unlikely stylistic bedfellows of flamenco, surf, punk and thrash. Incest, venereal disease, sex and blood-curdling violence.