VIA PRESS RELEASE | On April 17, 1989 in the UK and April 18, 1989 in the US, the Pixies’ second studio album Doolittle—the album now considered one of the quintessential alternative rock albums of the 1980s, that introduced the band’s signature “loudQUIETloud” sound, landed on a plethora of all-time “Best” lists in media outlets including Rolling Stone, NME, SPIN, Q and Pitchfork, the album that, when writing “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” Nirvana’s late Kurt Cobain admitted, “I was trying to write the ultimate pop song. I was basically trying to rip off the Pixies”—celebrates its 30th anniversary with a Platinum certification in recognition of one million units sold.
Produced by Gil Norton, Pixies – Black Francis/rhythm guitar, vocals, Joey Santiago/guitar, David Lovering/drummer, and original bassist Kim Deal – recorded Doolittle at Boston’s Downtown Recorders starting in the fall of 1988. The 15-track album, with its quirky, melodic sound and darkly humorous lyrics, was rooted in winos and hobos, Biblical violence, Hebrew numerology, torture, death, and surrealism.
Doolittle’s track listing was formidable—five of its 15 songs landed on a Rolling Stone Readers Poll that named the Top 10 Pixies songs of all time—”Wave of Mutilation,” “Hey,” “Debaser,” “Monkey Gone To Heaven,” and “Here Comes Your Man,” the latter two becoming Top 5 singles on Billboard’s Modern Rock/Alternative chart over the summer of 1989. London’s Daily Telegraph called the album “a scintillating rock’n’roll album,” the NME wrote, “‘Doolittle’ is consistently brilliant…let’s be honest: this is what music was made for,” and in its five-star review, Rolling Stone remarked that it “laid the groundwork for Nineties rock.”
To mark this milestone, Pixies’ Boston-hometown iconic record store chain Newbury Comics announces a limited-edition exclusive vinyl pressing of Doolittle to be released on July 12. The album will be available pressed on three different kinds of vinyl art—pinwheel, splatter and swirl—each design chosen by Newbury Comics staff members. Only 1,000 copies of each edition will be available (3,000 copies in all), and can be purchased only via Newbury Comics, in store or online. Preorders are available now.
Looking back on that time, Black Francis told Rolling Stone, “For people who wanted raw and primal, it fit the bill. And for people who wanted it to be sonically full and not haphazard sounding but sounding like it had real vision, it satisfied those people. So it was twice as many people. Before we recorded with Gil Norton, we made a little demo and I remember lying on Joey Santiago’s living room floor in his apartment, going, “Wow, we really did something special.” And we hadn’t even made the record yet.”
Kim Deal left the band in 2013 and bassist Paz Lenchantin became Pixies’ permanent bassist in 2016. The new line-up—Black Francis, Joey Santiago, David Lovering, and Lenchantin—have finished recording their second album as a unit which is expected out later this year, and will kick off its 2019–2020 Global Tour on September 12 with a 33-date headline UK/European tour.
