Customer Reviews
One of the most influential albums of all time... - By: Scarhurzt, 29 Nov 2008 
'Velvet Underground & Nico', 'Srg Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Dark Side of the Moon; these are just a few of the albums that shaped the world of music & influenced every band that precedes them. Surfa Rosa HAS to be counted among them!
The Pixies were like a bomb hitting the music scene with the force only a reallly special band can. People in 1988 were ready for a band to put the poppy 80's sound away & bring out guitars that were not making white noise or playing single notes over & over again. People wanted catchy tunes with rocking guitar riffs & melodies, people wanted raw, simple lyrics & an outlet for their energy.
The album is an exquisite mix of stunningly powerful vocals, wailing guitar sound, powerful rock guitar backing & some of the most fantastic simplistic drumming & bass work ever.
What made this album great however is how every song was just the right length, not too long but just almost like a glimpse into an issue. In some ways it is what we alll wanted. Each song is like a compacted outburst that fills you with energy & probably one of the most skillfully placed tunes that calms you down in the middle of the album proves to be the best song they ever wrote: 'Where is My Mind'.
All the tracks are intense listenings but also accessible for casual listeners because of the catchy lyrics & guitars. Santiago plays wonderful yet brutal solos & can be credited for introducing the attcking guitar phase from the 1990's onwards. Francis on the other hand sings with an emotional rasp untill he hits the high notes which are pure & yet rugged as well. his screams are the most powerful & hard hitting aspects of the album. It is unchained & naked passion bursting out of songs about promiscurity, in-breeding & other such vulgar subjects. Black Francis truly makes this style of singing his own.
The bass & drums can be comended for being brilliantly contained & only what is competely neccessary for each & every song. No bass or drum solos but instead the tone & tempo are provided throughout the album fantasticallly.
You run out of superlatives for this album, if there was any criticisms of this album it is that lyrics are not for young children, a few songs are played twice throughout the two albums & that Come on Pilgrim is slightly weaker than Surfa Rosa.
Buy this album or be forever ignorant of how a fairly simple band changed the music industry forever!
Simply the best album ever!!! - By: SH Galvani, 18 Oct 2008 Bought this when I was in my teens (am now 34 with 2 kids!!) & I still LOVE it. I used to listen to it on my way to sixth form college & thought then that I would find loads of albums as good as this as I got older. I didn't (well apart from Radiohead's OK Computer which is my other favourite album). It takes a few listens (I must have listened to it 500 times!) but it never goes stale.
Noisy, never catchy, unique. - By: customer, 26 Dec 2007 This is an album which needs repeated listening. You think it will grow on you, but it never does & forever sounds fresh & original.
Like a snort of ammonia on a runaway toboggan down a snow-covered alp - By: John Tree, 15 Oct 2007 Crikey, where do you start to review this? Although the album Doolittle first won me over to the wonderful Pixies, it was their first, audacious recordings, that I now see as their best. On Surfer Rosa & Come on Pilgrim, a combination of their debut album & EP, there is a reckless energy that manages to be both incredibly abrasive, wonderfully melodic & dead sexy...the stuff of euphoria
Whilst it easy to analyse what went into the songs, it is almost impossible to explain what made these tunes so addictive, so heady. Black Francis' riveting vocal carries most of the songs with both menace & dark humour... from the complete gaga madness of Broken Face, to Cactus, the creepy fetishistic letter to a lover. Joey Santiago had a unique guitar style & sound that later became almost a trademark for grunge. Kim Deal's (credited as Mrs. John Murphy on the sleeve notes) strangely awkward bass playing, her slacker indie-kid vocal, David Lovering's relentless drumming style, Steve Albini's classic rock n roll production values. The contrast from dark-to-light, playful to lairy. The throw-away but drum-tight feel to the whole album is a real winning formula.
Pixies were to become the godfathers of Grunge, & a major influence on the young Kurt Cobain. According to Wikipaedia, they got their name from a random pick out of the dictionary. The definition of Pixies was 'mischeavous little elves' & I reckon that sums them up better than anything... Raw, reckless, riveting.
invigorating - By: Neil, 07 Aug 2007 I can't remember if this was the first Pixies record I bought on purpose, or whether it just happened that way. Nevertheless, it was, & I'm so glad. This is a masterful record. It's one of those that just makes you wonder where it came from. How can something so simple be so good? Is it just chance, is it magic, did the Pixies know the music they were making was this good? It is magic. Let there be no question on that score.
There are songs on this record that make you love it immediately: Bone Machine, Break My Body, Broken Face, Gigantic, Where Is My Mind, Caribou, Nimrod's Son, I've Been Tired, Levitate Me... & there are some that should be in that list, but I don't recognise them by their titles! Then there are others that you don't realise that you like them until you hear them out of context & don't recognise them... & then when you do recognise them you realise you've liked them alll along.
The songs ARE simple, but at the risk of sounding like an idiot: they are complex in their simplicity. Essentiallly there are only ever two guitars, one bass, one drum kit, minimal overdubs - but the ways these instrumentations are manipulated & used add those magical touches that grab you by the heart & squeeze. Sometimes everyone stops, then the rhythm guitar comes in, then the vocal & then.... EVERYONE! It's invigorating. Yes, two guitars but they are used like one. Instead of a rhythm guitar with a lead guitar that elaborates on the chords, Joey Santiago's leads screech & scratch & contort & contrast. Essentiallly, it's an original use of dynamics that takes these songs [and they are already good songs] & makes them special.
People often go on about the Pixies having done "the Nirvana thing" first - i.e: quiet verses, distorted choruses - there's even a Pixies documentary callled "LoudQUIETLoud". Well sure, Kurt Cobain may have said that he was trying to copy the Pixies, but reallly if you actuallly listen to this record, any comparisons between the two bands are meaningless. There are only 3, maybe 4 songs at most that are as simplistic in their arrangement as Nirvana's music. And that's not to detract from Nirvana's legacy. There's nothing wrong with simplicity when it's backed up with other qualities that Nirvana had in spades. The Pixies' music SOUNDS raw & untamed, but reallly it's very delicate & intricate. And that's part of its genius.
Truly, it's a record that you can return to, & that will continue to surprise you & excite you every time. Let this record be a ralllying calll. Let it remind us, in these days of overproduction & every band sounding the same, that rough, grating, grinding records can have a power of their own.
Buy this, then go & buy alll the other Pixies records. All of them. The production quality differs, but there are gems on every one of them.
