Review of The Pixies' Doolittle by Ben Sisario

The Pixies' Doolittle by Ben Sisario
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a great find from the bookstore in Chelsea Market in New York. This is a whole series of books about some of the greatest albums ever written: kind of the backstory, what do songs mean, interview the artists, and breakdown each song kind of thing.

Doolittle has long been on my list of all-time top five albums, but I was still shocked to find it on a shelf containing a breakdown on Pet Sounds and musings about Highway 61 Revisited (both fantastic in their own right).

Sisario isn't always the easiest to read, and sometimes the structure of his narrative makes little sense to me, which actually begins to make sense when considering the surrealistic nature of the album anyway. He spent his research time mostly with Charles Thompson (aka Black Francis, aka Frank Black), which I think was time well spent. Unsurprisingly, Kim Deal declined to talk to Sisario. Sisario also makes some leaps in his deconstruction of a few songs, which I simply don't see, but to each his own, and Thompson himself wouldn't have any quips about his listeners making meaning from his songs: his songs invite such interpretation. Nonetheless, Sisario still seems elitist at times, but who am I kidding, I am a music elitist, too.

I honestly didn't know about all of the Old Testament allusions on the album, certainly because I obviously hadn't listened closely enough. "Gouge Away" is about Samson, of all things. The Old Testament provides a grotesque palette for Thompson, which makes sense for the Pixies.

What I know from reading it is that I would relish the opportunity to meet and talk to Black Francis, and that I am not the only one that thinks this album is complete genious. You have to be a pretty big music nerd to like this book or the books in the series. I look forward to reading more of the series.

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