Counting down to my 30th birthday, I’ll be ranking my top 10 albums from the year I was born, plus some related insights from three decades of existence.
Number 5: Pixies – Doolittle
One thing I learned over the last 30 years: There’s beauty to your ugliness.
I’ve never considered myself attractive. I’ve been told I am a few times over the course of my life, but it’s never felt genuine to me. I’d assume they’re just trying to be nice, or leading me on to make fun of me. The first time I became aware of my body, of its relation to the world, is when kids in first grade laughed at me. I was a fat kid, and no matter how much I cut down on junk food or kept exercising, I couldn’t shake off the fat kid mentality. So I’ve grown to hate my body, hate mirrors, hate the beach, and eventually hate myself. I’ve looked inward with cracked lenses, and all I could see was an weird, ugly, useless boy.
Somehow that low self-esteem has also been a way towards power, although I’d often wield that power against myself to try and destroy this physical form that tried to lock me in. But I find the greatest strength when the flaws of my body and my mind manage to work together, if not to clean my impurities then at least to make me feel comfortable in my puddle of self-conscious mud. I think that’s sort of the same process the Pixies go through on their sophomore album, Doolittle. A lot on this album is rough-edged, almost unpleasant, both lyrically and musically, but this bed of ugly rock is necessary for the blossoming of some truly beautiful pop.
Destruction, and particularly self-destruction, is all over this album, both in Francis Black’s words and the way he screams them, as if wanting to tear apart the plastic that contains him and run away. “Debaser” opens the record with a celebration of the transformative power of strange and disturbing art, drawing a line between the surrealist film Un Chien Andalou (which I can’t really recommend in itself) and the Pixies’ music. Later on, though, the aggression expressed in such art is turned against the artist, with song titles like “Wave of Mutilation” and “I Bleed.” Both these songs suggest independence and liberation through self-harm, a concept that’s gone through my mind a couple of times. I’ve tried to intensify the relief of popping zits, but I haven’t gone too far in damaging myself. Still, I could understand the way Black tries to fight pain with pain.
It’s not all suffering though. The music on the album is dangerous and volatile but never gloomy, and sometimes even sounds uplifting. The formula of quiet verses and loud choruses feels comfortably familiar, although that might be thanks to the hindsight of 30 years of rock inspired by the Pixies’ invention. Kim Deal’s backing vocals add an ethereal, even if sometimes unsettling, touch to the songs, that at the very least counter the sense of utter loneliness in the lyrics. Deal’s contributions are crucial on “Here Comes Your Man,” where her bass riff is so bouncy it almost hides the story of fatality Black sings of. On “Monkey Gone to Heaven,” she harmonizes with Black in a way that perfectly encapsulates the sadness of the track, which remarkably is turned outward, watching humanity wreak environmental havoc. This is a moment of clarity, where the Pixies realize destruction isn’t always a path to freedom, and maybe that can stop the urge to inflict harm upon themselves.
All in all, listening to Doolittle is like opening up a wrap of dirty toilet paper, finding chocolate inside, taking a bite and realizing it’s filled with brandy. The ugliness surrounds sweetness that hides more grossness. It’s difficult to settle the differences between all those layers, like I sometimes struggle to ease the tensions between my inner and outer self. But somewhere in the middle, I can find something nice, sweet, maybe even beautiful, and that part is all me. I’m trying to learn to hate myself less, not to debase myself and ride waves of mutilation. It’s a long process, but it’s really down to having hope and faith in myself. And maybe a pinch of pixie dust.
Random on Purpose 