The first track on Pixies‘ début release Come on Pilgrim takes a dump in your mind with its bad Samaritans and shamanic shears. Thirty years on, it’s still gnawing at you like a raggedy chihuahua as you stumble through the wreckage of a house party’s aftermath. Those heavy drums of David Lovering‘s really feel like there being clambered over, that slow thaw of salivary guitar eating at you as your head is filled with some mad preacher screaming “Reeeepennnntt!” to the rotting deathstar that was once your mind. What an introduction. “Give dirt to me”, begs Black Francis, a hungry imagination fed in maggoty magnificence.
Instrumentally awry and soaked in noisy dynamics, Come on Pilgrim was a blast then and still stakes you with its riotous ways today. Can’t begin to express what a breath of fresh air this was at the time; it knifed a naughty notch for itself, lyrically attuned to its shambolic emphasism. This was/is a beautifully deranged work of genius, full of playful savagery and comical chaos — the hairy-backed revulsion of Vaughan Oliver‘s cover and its scratchy typographic spiderings giving you subversive cerebrals.
The mariachi burn of “Isla De Encanta” that could have easily sound-tracked that Dusk ‘Til Dawn bloodfest. The moshpit frivolities of “Vamos” finds Joey Santiago sounding superbly dangerous on headphones with that electric cable sound whipping the concrete. What a brilliant mish-mash, full of disposable dynamics, sobering surprises and caricatured cave-ins. The dog-eared sing-a-long of “Holiday Song”, the incest-riddled “Nimrod’s Son”. Finally dipping into the delicious drag of “Levitate Me” that masticates a softer melodic to tease of greater things to come.
The third disc of this combined and re-released set stabs at the blossoming kernel of the band, and for somebody that only got to see them in the flesh for their Bossanova outing (when they were all polished up), it gives a satisfying taste of the band in the raw, devoid of all the studio bazzazz — and how amazingly complete they sound without the extra production values – oooh-eeee. Live From The Fallout Shelter first aired in late 1986 on WJUL-FM and is a fascinating document.
A fiery affirmation that captures the chemistry right there, all naked and trembly. Francis’s oddly constrained vox jivering in those rythmics as Joey Santiago’s roulette wheels and hookends needle Lovering’s rioting buckets and Kim’s steadfast anchorage, the infectious joy of it all. Clocking in aft fifteen tracks including an early airing of “Subbacultcha” — a song that would remain mysteriously buried until 1990 (as well as “Down To The Well”) — that capture a mighty fine duet between Kim and Charles. If you buy the CD version an extra six-minute bonus interview is included, one where the hapless interviewer fails to get to grips with the energy he has in the room.-Michael Rodham-Heaps-
