Email to a Friend

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Judging A Cover By Its Cover: Pixies “Doolittle”

December 9, 2009 by John Foster

Volume please: Certainly it would have made more sense to have done this in anticipation of the band’s visit to DC, but truth be told, it was the back to back nights at DAR that prodded me to return to it’s blessed monkey glory. My love for the design work of Vaughan Oliver is well documented and keeping from overloading the column with assessments of his career is always a strain (just in case you were wondering why I haven’t chirped in about the new Mountain Goats.) But leaving a landmark record, of a time that seems like ancient history yet pressingly relevant, seems like poor form – so here we are.

I can’t really speak to how this plays should you first hear it today, as I can only relate the impact it had upon first release. The Pixies had burned a path through alternative rock with their debut EP and then the magic of Surfer Rosa and now the entire world was watching their next move. Warners put their full muscle behind the record and looking back, it still shocks that they didn’t break into mainstream on the back of “Here Comes Your Man,” but had that happened, it might very well have been the end of the group right then and there given the tension between Black Francis and Kim Deal. As it was, the rest of the album has a few pop moments (especially the sublimely simple Lovering croon “La La Love You”) but it was primarily off-kilter and caustic.

Everything special about the band is on display with the breathtaking opener, “Debaser.” Crazy simple bass line, stop start jittering chords crunching, a Black Francis vocal barely able to be contained within the track, sweet ethereal Deal just off spoken backing and a looping Joey Santiago guitar line with David Lovering playing eight different songs seemingly at the same time on the drums like Animal from The Muppets wearing a tank top as opposed to a chain around his neck.

In truth, the formula repeats more often than not, but it all depends on how unhinged the freakout highs get to decide where the songs fall. “Tame” follows with a shaking verse but a manic chorus of screams and sighs. “Wave of Mutilation” (not the surf version) lets the drums determine the surges and despite having a more ragged guitar feel is much poppier for it. “I Bleed” borders on funk beneath mismatched vocals but returns to the harsh chorus. It contains some of my favorite Pixies “moments” though. The guitars sound insanely great on this track and somehow come in five different ways in various intros throughout and stun you each time. Black Francis makes a funny lowering of his voice to dip out of the interchange with Deal and then Kim returns with a hurried “oh oh oh oh!” that melts me through and through.

Their trademark acoustic underlay doesn’t emerge until the second single and shouldabeenrockradiostaple “Here Comes Your Man.” A sweet tune with a more composed build and dynamic than the rest of the assembled, it is short on the energy that carried the group so far, but more than makes up for it by being a stone cold classic melody. Santiago’s guitar playing was never better utilized than this walking twang. “Dead” comes on and basically invents TV on the Radio. Seriously. It’s right there. It also channels early 80’s post funk hardliners before a quick powerpop bridge and then back at the slash and throb.

Doing “Debaser” one better – especially in the lyric department – “Monkey Gone to Heaven” is served up as the ultimate Pixies song and is the moment when you can really hear the extra money being spent in the studio (which makes it all the more amazing that Kim’s barely competent bass playing is still allowed to pop high in the mix – thank god for that.) Tiny touches like Lovering’s tambourine shake and slap punctuating Black Francis’s vocals still make my heart beat faster: Every second a masterpiece.

That they follow with the island twitch and roll of “Mr. Grieves” shows you that any pressure hasn’t dampened their fire and the ethnic swing reminds us all of just how special this band is, and why we pledged our devotion to them long ago. “Crackity Jones” spits the same spirit out, but twice as fast, and you are taken aback by how harsh the agressive points here still are before the playful smooth jazz combo of “La La” delivers a sweet kiss right on the lips.

It seems sacrilegious to deny the rest a full write-up as “No. 13 Baby” has a killer drum break and vocal and “There Goes My Gun” is a western taunt with a wonderful chorus. “Hey” remains one of my favorite songs in their canon – taking the Stones swagger up a notch, by calling a whore a whore, before reverting to their own tricks (I actually wish this didn’t take the easy route of the soaring guitar bleet in the chorus, but stuck to the awesome lead lines.) The thump of the drums and the vocals in the second half serve notice that most bands will never give a tenth of their soul to their performance in the way the Pixies did. “Silver” is a mournful country haunt slashing at your eyes and then “Gouge Away” closes with a perfect repeat of the formula laid out so nicely at the beginning.

Still – no one (sorry Nirvana) has or ever will do it better.

Landmark release still holds up. We get it. But what does it look like? As trumpeted earlier, Vaughan Oliver’s v23 never fails to wow and so they suffer the unenviable fate of having to be judged against their full portfolio, as opposed to the design population at large. On the cover alone, they truly deliver. The one item that certainly doesn’t come across in the photos is the gorgeously rough metallic copper sheen given to the cover, countered by the greengrey tint for the monkey/halo photo from Simon Larbalestier. The corrosive effect of his photos that is ridiculously appropriate for the material is somehow even more pronounced in this two-toned application. It is the rare instance where a strong image is covered over and surrounded by intense design elements and rather than compete – they form a stronger whole.

The image comes from a larger study of each song’s imagery (this one obviously taken from “Monkey Gone to Heaven”) that plays out in the enclosed booklet. The song lyrics are laid out in multiple directions across from corresponding images but they don’t go in the running order, creating an intriguing search across its pages. Larbalestier has been forever wedded to his Pixies work as his college projects formed some of the “Come On Pilgrim” EP packaging and he never looked back. When you realize he was only 1-2 years out of school when he was creating the images before you it makes the sophistication all the more amazing.

All of his Pixies work is stunning but few are as engaging and spooky and surprisingly beautiful as his monkey halo image (well, maybe the bull terrier image for the “Here Comes Your Man” single.) Combined with Larbalestier’s enchanting presentation of simple objects, Oliver balances them out with his tasteful and interesting use of simple objects like circles and numbers with a measured hand that no one can touch.

Oliver has always managed to make script fonts look a thousand times cooler than they actually are and this is one of his finest examples. The back tray uses white space in place of the copper glaze on the cover but fills the wash with rotating song titles that gives the entire proceeding a more engaging and sophisticated feel. He works the same magic with grid work on the cover as well.

It’s nearly perfect, and the marriage of Oliver and Larbalestier to the music would continue to create some of the finest music packaging the world has seen.

However, this was at a time when the CD might have been the third format a designer approached (although vinyl only out of habit coming first) and the layout and especially the disc labels would show it. As records, having a standardized label was usually pretty cool but the CD hadn’t caught up just yet and was also so riddled with technical information and credits etc… that it was often the weakest part. This one is no different as the track listing is just broken up and down the middle with everything else scattered and wrapped. Looking back it is a huge wasted opportunity. My booklet also has a huge error (the printers as opposed to the designer) where the pages for one signature (4 pages in this case) are jogged up so that they chop off a little of the images that should be centered with a substantial border and show off that outside of the bleed is a dull grey. I have to wonder if the entire run suffered as such. For no good reason whatsoever I would like to think that mine is the only one with this unique glitch.

You can see Oliver and Larbaleister recapturing their magical chemistry on the new Pixies “Minotaur” set.

Keeping Score Are You? Music 9.0 Design 8.5

John Foster puts his money where his mouth is at his very own design firm: Bad People Good Things. He has brand spanking new book out as well with Dirty Fingernails (Rockport).  Those publishers went mad and also let him author For Sale: Over 200 Innovative Solutions in Packaging Design (HOW), New Masters of Poster Design (Rockport), Maximum Page Design (HOW) and a monograph on Jeff Kleinsmith for Sub Pop Records.

Email to a Friend

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
•