One thing that seemed to be impressive about the 25th anniversary of Doolittle was that the Pixies seemed to be more interested in releasing new material instead.
Well that turned out to be wrong didn’t it? Here it is – just in time for Christmas – Doolittle 25, a re-release of the album with B-Sides, Demos and Peel Sessions.
If you’re the kind of person who’s interested in B-Sides,
Demos and Peel Sessions (and believe me, I am), you’d think this would be the
mother of all packages. It’s not even very
expensive. What makes it much less
impressive is that the Pixies have already released a complete B-Sides and Peel
Sessions separately roughly 15 years ago, meaning that a significant amount of
the songs on Doolittle 25 are almost certainly on the shelves of the people
most likely to buy Doolittle 25.
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| Then... |
Another point of minor contention is that the album hasn’t
been remastered, which is so much expected of deluxe editions it feels like it
should be pointed out in big letters when something hasn’t been tinkered with.
On the whole I think most remasters are pretty good – I certainly
haven’t come across a remastering which has made something sound worse. In this respect I think I am relatively
easily pleased – just look at the one-star reviews of Nevermind on Amazon to
read some audiophiles kicking off about something called the Loudness War and a
lot of uses of the word ‘dynamic’ in a way I don’t really understand. Some things definitely need remastering (the
Beatles remasters were necessary), sometimes it can seem like pouring old wine
into new bottles. Really though if you
are going to buy an album for the second time it’d be nice to know they’ve done
something to improve it. Even by just a
little bit. It’d be better to be lied to
in a way.
It comes down to this: realistically it’s going to be a
majority of existing Pixies fans that
buy Doolittle 25, and Pixies fans will very definitely own Doolittle
already, probably the B-Sides and BBC discs as well. So that leaves the demos. And, Demos usually being the weakest sibling
in the Bonus Track family, that’s where Doolittle 25 really hung for me – they
effectively rereleased a bunch of stuff we all had already and the only real
new content was some demos. And that
would have been really bad; only the demos actually turn out to be really, really good.
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| ...and Now! |
I normally skip over demos on deluxe rereleases and I
suspect the majority of people do. With
the benefit of hindsight they’re often little more than really awful sounding
versions of songs you like. It’s
possible in some cases to make a case for it being interesting to see ‘the
creative process in action.’ But just
because it’s interesting from a historical point of view it doesn’t necessarily
make it fun to listen to. I mean, who
listens to the Beatles Anthology series now?
Who listened to it then? Even hardcore Beatles fans don’t actually listen to the Anthology series. The reason for this is that seeing the
creative process at work is like knowing how the magic trick is done. You think you want to know, but really you
don’t. Recent examples include Public
Enemy’s It Takes A Nation Of Millions… and Fear Of A Black Planet and Led Zep’s
back catalogue – all the bonus tracks are either throwaway or virtually
identical to the original. The
alternative 'Stairway To Heaven' is a musical spot the difference
but no more.
However, there are exceptions that prove the rule, and the
demos on Doolittle 25 are an exception. As I said in a previous post, although I like
all the Pixies’ albums for me Surfer Rosa captures a raw energy whereas
Doolittle is just a bit too polished and clean and frankly less fucked up. Well the demos on Doolittle 25 can give you a
glimpse into a world where Doolittle was made in a similar way to Surfer Rosa,
or even Come On Pilgrim. The demos are even all laid out helpfully in the same
order as the original album. When it comes to the Pixies I believe they were
not served as well by ‘polished’ production, or at least they were made less
exciting by it. That doesn’t mean I
think they only worked as a raw grungy outfit, more that there are parts of
Doolittle where it feels like the production is filling in some gaps that would
have been left more intriguing let alone.
That works great for something quite bombastic like ‘Monkey Gone To Heaven’,
but not always. ‘Tame’ is a great example
of the production of Doolittle doing the song a disservice. Listening to the demo of it, the heavy breathing from Frank Black is bestial and
creepy. On the album it sounds merely percussive. And that’s fine – it is after all a matter of
taste – but I find with a band as seminally weird as the Pixies I’d rather hear
them being bestial and creepy than merely percussive. I mean, the second half of Doolittle has some
tracks that I’ve always thought of as filler pretty much, but the demos of 'No
13 Baby' and 'Hey' feel more like a brush with insanity and therefore more alive
than the album versions.
Admittedly, this is quite a specialist vindication of
Doolittle 25. It’s basically great news
for Pixies fans who thought they got a bit tame after Surfer Rosa and wondered
what it would have been like if they hadn’t.
The world is not full to the brim of people (especially in 2014)
wondering that. Doolittle 25 shows what
a transitional album Doolittle was - it was apparently during the making of
this album that Deal and Black learned to really loathe each other for instance
(which is such a given now you tend to forget that they probably managed to be
in the same room as each other for whole hours at a time). So even though there’s a something a bit
suspect about another reselling of a much-repackaged and resold (and tiny) back
catalogue, I’ve chosen to forgive Doolittle 25 that. I've chosen not to get up on my high horse and instead enjoy it for making an
album I’ve always felt was slightly overrated make complete sense to me.
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