Doolittle is the second studio album by the American alternative rock band Pixies, released on April 17, 1989, on 4AD. The album was an instant critical success and became the band's breakthrough album. Doolittle was especially well received in Europe, where the British music weeklies Melody Maker and Sounds named it their album of the year. Pixies' main songwriter and lead vocalist Black Francis wrote the idiosyncratic lyrics, which allude to surrealist imagery, biblical violence, and descriptions of torture and death.
The album is praised for its "quiet/loud" dynamic, which was achieved through subdued verses that are founded on Kim Deal's bass patterns and David Lovering's drums. The peaks in tone and volume were achieved through the addition of distorted guitars by Francis and Joey Santiago. This technique influenced the development of early-1990s grunge music; Kurt Cobain said Doolittle was one of his favorite records and that its songs heavily influenced Nirvana's song "Smells Like Teen Spirit".
Upon its release, Doolittle reached number eight on the UK Albums Chart. It has sold consistently since its release, and numerous music publications have placed it among the top albums of the 1980s. Both singles from the album, "Here Comes Your Man" and "Monkey Gone to Heaven", reached the US Billboard Modern Rock Tracks, while many of the album's tracks, including "Debaser" and "Hey", remain favorites of critics and fans.
Background
Pixies' 1988 album Surfer Rosa was better received in the United Kingdom than in the United States. In support of its release, the band toured Europe with fellow Bostonian band Throwing Muses, where according to a critic for the UK weekly music magazine Melody Maker, they were "welcomed like gods, which I felt underestimated them somewhat". Multiple cover photographs of Pixies were published in Melody Maker as the album peaked at number one on New Musical Express (NME) Indie Chart.
Versions of songs that would later appear on Doolittle—including "Dead", "Hey", "Tame", and "There Goes My Gun"—were recorded in the second half of 1988 during several sessions for the BBC Radio One presenter John Peel's radio show, and "Hey" appeared on a free Extended Play (EP) that circulated with a 1988 edition of Sounds. The first demos for the album were recorded in 1988 in one week at the recording studio Eden Sound in Boston, Massachusetts, during a break from the band's touring schedule. The group's frontman and main songwriter Black Francis gave the upcoming album the provisional title Whore, which he later said was meant "in the more traditional ... operatic ... biblical sense ... as in the great whore of Babylon".
After completing the demo tape, the band's manager Ken Goes suggested two producers: Liverpudlian Gil Norton and American Ed Stasium. The band had worked with Norton on the single version of "Gigantic" in May 1988, and Francis had no preference of producer. Ivo Watts-Russell, head of the band's label 4AD, chose Norton to produce their next album. Norton arrived in Boston in mid–October 1988, when he and Francis met to review the demo recordings. They spent two days analyzing the songs' structures and arrangements, and two weeks in pre-production as Norton familiarized himself with Pixies' sound.
Recording and production Recording sessions for Doolittle began on October 31, 1988, in Boston at Downtown Recorders, which was then a 24-track studio. 4AD gave Pixies a budget of $40,000 (approximately $ today), excluding producer fees. This was a relatively modest sum for a large, late-1980s independent record label but four times the amount spent on their debut Surfer Rosa. Principal recording was completed on November 23, 1988, followed by two weeks of mixing sessions which began on November 28 at Carriage House Studios, a residential studio in Stamford, Connecticut. Norton worked with two assistant recording engineers and two second assistants. He hired Steven Haigler as mixing engineer, with whom he had earlier worked at Fort Apache Studios.
Francis took a mixture of newly written and older tracks to the recording sessions. Many of the newer tracks were underdeveloped and, according to Norton, were minute or minute-and-a-half "ditties" consisting of short bursts of "verse, chorus, verse, beat-beat-beat-bang ... finished". Norton said as producer and arranger, he often built tracks by suggesting the band double or repeat sections. Of the approximately 23 songs or ideas the band started with, only three of Doolittle final 15 tracks are longer than three minutes.
During the final mixing, Norton smoothed the band's rough edges using tight compression, and adding reverb and delay to the guitars, which he then tracked in multiple layers. This is especially notable on the intended lead single "Debaser" and in the double-tracked vocals on "Wave of Mutilation". During pre-production, Norton advised Francis to slow the tempo and lengthen several songs by adding more verses. "There Goes My Gun" was originally a much-faster and shorter Hüsker Dü-style song; on Norton's advice, Francis slowed the tempo while "Debaser" was given an extended coda. Norton's suggestions were not always welcome; several instances of advice to add verses frustrated the singer. On one occasion, Francis took Norton to a record store and handed him a copy of a Buddy Holly greatest hits album, in which most of the songs are around two or three minutes long, justifying his desire to keep his songs short. Francis later said he knew Norton was trying to give the band a more-commercial sound while he wanted the band to retain the underground sound they achieved with Albini.
Tension between Francis and the band's bassist Kim Deal were noticeable to band members and the production team during the recording. Bickering and standoffs marred the sessions, and led to increased stress among the band members. John Murphy, Deal's husband at the time, said the band dynamic "went from just all fun to work" during the production. Production continued until mixing was completed on December 12, 1988. During this period, Santiago became unhappy because he felt Norton was adding too much reverb to his guitar parts. In protest, Santiago covered his Marshall guitar amplifiers with blankets to make clear he did not want his sound to be interfered with. The final tapes were sent for mastering later that month.
Music and lyrics
Norton's production on Doolittle is markedly different from Albini's recording of Surfer Rosa and is far more polished than the debut's ambient, raw recordings. Albini's recording emphasizes Francis's abrasive guitars that both popularized the band and sealed his reputation, leading to later work with musicians such as Nirvana and PJ Harvey. Critics continue to debate whether Norton's or Albini's production best served the Pixies' music.Gordon, Jeremy. "The evolution of Steve Albini: "If the dumbest person is on your side, you’re on the wrong side" ". The Guardian, August 15, 2023. Retrieved March 18, 2024
Two of the album's songs are based on Old Testament stories of sex and death: the story of David and Bathsheba in "Dead", and the story of Samson and Delilah in "Gouge Away". Francis's fascination with Biblical themes began in his teenage years; when he was twelve, he and his parents joined the Pentecostal church. Biblical imagery is also prevalent in "Monkey Gone to Heaven", in which using numerology, Francis describes the Devil as being "six" and God as "seven".
Side one Doolittle opens with "Debaser", which is described as a "noisy surf-punk" songHuges, Rob. "The story behind Pixies' Debaser ". Louder, September 1, 2021. Retrieved March 18, 2024 and widely considered important in Pixies' crossover to the mainstream. It begins with Deal's bass guitar pattern, which breaks into the first chorus when joined by Santiago's guitar riff and Black's shouted vocal. The track, which is a live favorite, contains an extended coda in which, according to the music critic Rob Hughes, the bassline is overlain with Santiago's "frenzied guitar riffage ... at full tilt as the song hurtles to its climax". Francis's lyrics, which he wrote while an anthropology student at University of Massachusetts Amherst, refer to "slicing up eyeballs", referencing Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí's 1929 film Un Chien Andalou. Francis has said he "got into avant-garde movies and Surrealism as an escape from reality ... to me, Surrealism is totally artificial".
"Tame" is built around Deal's three-note bass progression (D, C, F) overlaid by Joey Santiago's guitar parts that include an E79 chord, which he described as his "Hendrix chord"—a dominant seventh with an augmented second sharp ninth chord, notable from the 1967 song "Purple Haze". Tame's "loud part" occurs during the chorus, when Francis plays a D/C/F progression and repeatedly screams "tame". Along with "Gouge Away", "Tame" is regarded as one of the peaks of Pixies' signature quiet verse / loud chorus dynamic. According to the music writer Mark Beaumont, "Tame" and "Gouge Away" were among the Pixies' tracks Kurt Cobain had in mind when writing "Smells Like Teen Spirit", which Cobain said was his attempt at "writing a Pixies song". The same influence can be heard in the Nirvana tracks "In Bloom" and "Heart-Shaped Box". The track ends with Francis and Deal repeatedly grunting, a sound that suggests two people having sex.
The lyrics of "Wave of Mutilation" are based on contemporaneous newspaper reports of Japanese men committing murder–suicide after unsuccessful business ventures in a scene Francis describes as these men being forced to drive "off a pier into the ocean". Imagery of drowning and oceans also appears in "Mr. Grieves" and "Monkey Gone to Heaven".
"Here Comes Your Man" was written when Francis was a teenager; along with "Monkey Gone to Heaven", Rolling Stone critic Chris Mundy described the song as a melodic and "outright pop song". It was first recorded for the Purple tapes sessions, a version the music writer Phil Udell described as rough "around the edges". Norton arranged the album version.
Side One closes with the album's first single, "Monkey Gone to Heaven". The song is written in D major and opens with Francis playing a short chord progression that is backed by Deal's bass guitar. The track is over-dubbed with cellos, violins, and plucked piano strings which made Norton nervous because it took the band "outside [their] usual parameters", which they had earlier believed "we weren't ever going to do on a Pixies song". "Monkey Gone to Heaven" describes the effects of human-caused environmental destruction on the ocean. Francis said: "on one hand, it's this big organic toilet. Things get flushed and repurified or decomposed and it's this big, dark, mysterious place. It's also a very mythological place where there are octopus's gardens, the Bermuda Triangle, Atlantis, and mermaids."
Side two The second side opens with "Mr. Grieves" played in frantic style that has been described as "faux-hillbilly" and "wired folk". The lyrics take the idea of destruction further, suggesting the human race is doomed to extinction. The following track "Crackity Jones" is sung partly in Spanish, and incorporates G and A triads over a C pedal. Francis's rhythm guitar starts with an eighth-note downstroke that is reminiscent of early 1980s second-wave punk rock. The lyrics of "Crackity Jones" were inspired by Francis's one-month stay in Puerto Rico as a student, when he shared a "seedy" high-rise apartment with a "weirdo, psycho, gay roommate". Musically the track is the fastest-played and most-aggressive track on the album.