This review was as good as written ten years ago, since by then, all of these songs had already entered the short canon of music memorized by my adolescent mind. As I acquired every new piece of Pixies material, I saw songs by other bands expunged from my cramped brain. As I absorbed "In Heaven", Big Black's "The Model" all but disappeared; "Into the White" burst in, Dinosaur Jr's "Freak Scene" ran screaming. I distinctly remember R.E.M.'s "The One I Love" getting the boot from, of all songs, "Winterlong". And these are just the b-sides.
I think it goes without saying that the Pixies' b-sides don't make for an average, run-of-the-mill outtakes compilation, as many of the songs are almost or equally as radiant as the more fortunate tracks that made it to the five classics between 1987 and 1991. And if nothing else, this release proves that, like Dylan in the 60s and Brian Eno in the 70s, the Pixies were the blinding visionaries of the 80s. Virtually everything they touched was groundbreaking and revelatory, leaving one to wish they could only have touched more.
Although Complete B-Sides isn't actually totally complete, leaving out live versions of "Planet of Sound" and "Tame" from an alternate "Alec Eiffel" single, everything else is here: 19 tracks, amounting to 48 minutes of music. The disc also features classic videos of "Here Comes Your Man" and "Allison" (though the wind-tunneled "Alec Eiffel" is curiously absent), as well as enlightening, albeit short liner notes for each song. And because 4AD is an intelligent label, Complete B-Sides is sequenced chronologically. The tracklist is exactly what you'd get if you burned the singles for "Gigantic", "Monkey Gone to Heaven", "Here Comes Your Man", "Velouria", "Dig for Fire", "Planet of Sound", and "Alec Eiffel" to CDR, in that exact order, minus the album track that opens each disc.
An alternate take of Surfer Rosa's "River Euphrates" opens the record with nearly a minute of Joey Santiago's guitar antics, as well as a dynamic ending which replaces the fade-out of the original. "Vamos", which appeared on both Come on Pilgrim and Surfer Rosa, was always a live favorite and usually their set closer: between lead singer Black Francis' yelping and Santiago's brutal guitar torturing, this live version is as explosive as they come. But Complete B-Sides truly takes off with one of the best under-two-minute songs ever: a live cover of "In Heaven (Lady in the Radiator Song)" from David Lynch's Eraserhead. Often their encore, the song grows gradually louder and louder, ending with one of the band's most cathartic moments on record.
The disc moves from Surfer Rosa-era to Doolittle with "Manta Ray", a classic Pixies head-bobber boasting Mexican-style guitar strumming and quick, two-note drumming. "Weird at My School", as Black accurately notes, spotlight the "hyperness" that defined so much of the Pixies' work. "Dancing the Manta Ray", meanwhile, shows the band's surf-rock tendencies, as does the sublime "Wave of Mutilation (UK Surf)". "Into the White" follows with a killer bassline and Kim Deal's breathy vocals; the perfect balance of tension and release, and one of the real standouts here. The Doolittle era concludes with "Bailey's Walk", one of the Pixies' slowest and weirdest songs, featuring Black Francis in fractured and tortured yowls.
The Bossanova b-sides open with drummer David Lovering's tepid ode to Debbie Gibson, "Make Believe", followed by Deal's beautiful cover of Neil Young's "I've Been Waiting for You". After "The Thing" (essentially an outtake from a section of "The Happening"), we're offered a driving instrumental Frank Black wrote at 15. And the era's rounded out by another gorgeous Neil Young cover ("Winterlong") and "Santo", another slow, chanty number straight out of a bar scene in El Paso, 1864.
"Theme from 'Narc'", the first track from the Trompe le Monde years, is just that-- a cover of the theme song from the "Narc" video game. It's another adrenaline-pumping instrumental, displaying the raw, interstellar quality that characterized Trompe le Monde. "Build High" works as a kind of south-of-the-border space-jam, and on the Spanish-sung Graham Gouldman cover, "Evil Hearted You"-- as with the instrumental version of "Letter to Memphis", which closes the record-- the guitar mimics the lyrics so well you can almost hear the ghost of Black Francis departing.
When I bought this album the other day, wearing my Pixies shirt by coincidence (I swear!), the shave-headed girl behind the counter said, "Nice shirt. I love the Pixies." I told her that I already owned all these songs, but just had to buy the album, anyway. "Oh, really," she said cautiously, as though there were something pathetic about that. "Maybe there is," I later thought to myself. But then I looked at my tattered Pixies shirt, so beaten and worn it was practically falling off my body, and I thought otherwise. Like the music itself, which remains as vital and exciting as it was upon the day of its release, I'll never let this shirt go. Some things you just keep around to remind you of your first true love.
