not crap overall.

i like surfer rosa, doolittle and parts of trompe le monde.

bossanova sucks a dog testicle. fuck that album. keeeRAP!

personally imho, the breeders first album, POD, trumps them all.

doolittle is the archetype indie rock album, with radio friendly production and a stereotypical late 80's arty packaging job that has aged about as well as sour milk and eggs. this bothers me some, but the songs are quite strong.

i like the guitar playing, some of the vocals and lyrics (black francis has a nice banshee howl) drumming is good, bass playing is all that it needs to be.

i saw them play with love and rockets a long time ago. that was not crap (although L&R were crap..)

tour with U2: crap.

good band, even if massively overrated.

the breeders were on 4AD on Title TK ?

Living a couple continents away from college radio, college rock and college hype, and having listened to this band on their own merits regardless of external factors before I´d ever even seen an edition of Melody Maker or NME (let alone read one), they were my first "favourite band" (around '91 / '92), and still one whose records are some of my favourites ever (well, at least a couple of them). I know (and like) Husker Du, Pere Ubu and probably whatever else they´re apparently supposed to be a rip-off of, and it doesn´t change my opinion of them for a second. Just my taste, but still, all of the silly generalizations and the general opinions expressed in this thread smell kind of funny to me.

And speaking of listening to a band on its own merits, I sort of doubt The Breeders would be held in such high regard here in their own terms, without the fact that it kinda works to have them as the much more talented, but never justly recognized, offshoot of the overhyped Pixies.

Or maybe I just never got how medocre The Pixies were, and how underrated The Breeders are, and I´m just rationalizing to compensate for my lack of sensibility, who knows.

Bernardo wrote:And speaking of listening to a band on its own merits, I sort of doubt The Breeders would be held in such high regard here in their own terms, without the fact that it kinda works to have them as the much more talented, but never justly recognized, offshoot of the overhyped Pixies.

Or maybe I just never got how medocre The Pixies were, and how underrated The Breeders are, and I´m just rationalizing to compensate for my lack of sensibility, who knows.

I think the Breeders stand on their own, definitely. It is arguable that w/o the Pixies, they may have not gotten noticed, but then again, would there be the kind of energy that is present on the early Breeders work without the Pixies?

I think the Breeders album Pod is just a good document of what can happen when pent up/pissed off/atrophied creativity is let loose. Obviously, those songs that Kim Deal had were not going anywhere in the Pixies, so she did them with Tanya Donelly (another person in the shadow of the "stronger personality" in her "main" band, Throwing Muses). There's a wonderful degree of spontaneity, darkness, whimsy and looseness on Pod that no other Pixies album ever had. Not to mention, it's one of Albini's best recordings, imho. To top it off, Britt Walford, drum god, is playing on it. I think it is pretty much a hit from start to finish.

The Pixies had no record that was a hit from start to finish.

For as urgent as Black Francis sounds, the albums are very methodical and calculated and all over the board as far as having consistency. I guess some could say that this is what makes the Pixies great. To me, it just means one song sounds like a tongue-in-cheek ode to The Smiths (La La Love You) and another song sounds like Guy from Fugazi (Debaser) and yet another song sounds like Jane's Addiction. There's some kind of stylistic-genre hopping as M.O. to make the overall Pixies albums more palatable to that college rock fan base. This again, is just an observation, not a criticism necessarily, as I clearly voted not crap.

I like the Pixies enough that I own most of their records, but I rarely put them on. So many people my age like them, I've heard them at far too many bars and parties and shows to ever want to go out of my way to listen to them.

It is annoying that they've become labeled THE band of the pre-Nevermind era by the likes of Pitchfork and Spin. The best moments of Surfer Rosa and Doolittle can't really compare to You're Living All Over Me or Atomizer.

I'll take Pod or Last Splash sir.

Pixies suffer as much as any band from massive over-exposure, to the extent that I'll probably never make a conscious choice to listen to them again.

The problem with over-exposure is not just that one gets bored of the (same) tracks, but that one is exposed to tracks (that one might otherwise still enjoy) at inappropriate moments.

Pixies were a great noisy pop band.

At their best, Pixies were as good as I've heard. At their worst they were merely dull.

NOT CRAP.

Over rated, boring, just not that good really although they have a few listenable songs.

who?

mr.arrison wrote:

Bernardo wrote:And speaking of listening to a band on its own merits, I sort of doubt The Breeders would be held in such high regard here in their own terms, without the fact that it kinda works to have them as the much more talented, but never justly recognized, offshoot of the overhyped Pixies.

Or maybe I just never got how medocre The Pixies were, and how underrated The Breeders are, and I´m just rationalizing to compensate for my lack of sensibility, who knows.

I think the Breeders stand on their own, definitely. It is arguable that w/o the Pixies, they may have not gotten noticed, but then again, would there be the kind of energy that is present on the early Breeders work without the Pixies?

I think the Breeders album Pod is just a good document of what can happen when pent up/pissed off/atrophied creativity is let loose. Obviously, those songs that Kim Deal had were not going anywhere in the Pixies, so she did them with Tanya Donelly (another person in the shadow of the "stronger personality" in her "main" band, Throwing Muses). There's a wonderful degree of spontaneity, darkness, whimsy and looseness on Pod that no other Pixies album ever had. Not to mention, it's one of Albini's best recordings, imho. To top it off, Britt Walford, drum god, is playing on it. I think it is pretty much a hit from start to finish.

The Pixies had no record that was a hit from start to finish.

For as urgent as Black Francis sounds, the albums are very methodical and calculated and all over the board as far as having consistency. I guess some could say that this is what makes the Pixies great. To me, it just means one song sounds like a tongue-in-cheek ode to The Smiths (La La Love You) and another song sounds like Guy from Fugazi (Debaser) and yet another song sounds like Jane's Addiction. There's some kind of stylistic-genre hopping as M.O. to make the overall Pixies albums more palatable to that college rock fan base. This again, is just an observation, not a criticism necessarily, as I clearly voted not crap.

I totally agree with this. Also, I don't agree with the notion that the Breeders were the always-neglected-yet-clearly-better band in most people's eyes in America. I remember back in the early to mid-90's when the Breeders were actually considered more of a success in the U.S. than the Pixies (what with cracking the Top 40 and all with "Cannonball", headlining Lollapalooza, and lengthy Spin cover stories, etc.). Now it's a different story, of course, with all kinds of bands paying lip-service to the Pixies and reunion DVD's and what not, while the Breeders get dropped by Elektra. If the Pixies have more hype now, that's fine, I like them, too; but the Breeders, to me, simply have made some great records that hold up better than a lot of Black Francis/Frank Black material, both with and without the Pixies. Regardless of who's more popular, that won't change.

i think all of you haters are targeting them because of their popularity. still my overall favorite band since about '90.. Doolittle is my favorite record of theirs, but I also think Bossanova and Trompe Le Monde are almost as good. Surfer Rosa is obviously an incredible album, but I find myself listening to it the least.

seriously, just because YOU think they're "overrated" doesn't make 'em crap.