Pixies

A track from Surfer Rosa, it is the most iconic showcase of Steve Albini's raw recording approach and the band's quiet-loud dynamic.

• Listen in the opening to the arpeggios (chords played one note at a time) Joey Santiago plays on a guitar run through a chorus (an effect that layers the sound so it shimmers) pedal. They create a hazy texture, as if heard from underwater.
• The female voice lying low in the background of the chorus belongs to Kim Deal, and producer Steve Albini is said to have deliberately recorded it in a tiled bathroom to capture natural reverb.
• Black Francis's voice begins as a restrained whisper and climbs, toward the end, into a high register close to a scream; this drop between extremes creates the tension of the whole song.
• The gradually accelerating playing and blurring fade-out at the song's end often stretch out longer in concert, expanding into a moment when the audience sings along with the chorus.

The only track on which Kim Deal sang lead, it shows how independent her voice and songwriting were within a band increasingly centered on Thompson.

• This is the only track on Surfer Rosa with Kim Deal on lead vocals, and her languid, low-pitched voice carries the entire song.
• The bass line forms the song's skeleton, with the thick, repetitive riff (a short, recurring phrase that forms a song's backbone) Deal wrote herself standing out.
• As Deal revealed in an interview, the song is said to have been loosely inspired by the relationship between lovers of different ages in the film Crimes of the Heart.
• In the chorus there is a moment when the guitar retreats almost into the background, leaving only voice and bass, and this open space makes the song sound even bigger.

With its sound polished by Gil Norton's production, this commercially successful album became the starting point of the band's rise to its peak.

• The album's opening track, "Debaser," begins with a reference to the Spanish surrealist film Un Chien Andalou, and the song distills the mood of the entire album.
• Gil Norton's production refined the sound to far greater clarity than before, and David Lovering's drums signal the song's transitions with fills (short, driving bursts of playing) that roll across the toms (low-pitched drums).
• On tracks like "Monkey Gone to Heaven," cello and violin are layered on top, creating a rich texture unlike that of the earlier albums.
• The quiet-loud dynamic running through the whole album can be heard here in its most finely honed form of the period.

A song that joins string arrangements with apocalyptic imagery, it reveals most vividly the imagination born of Thompson's Pentecostal background.

• The cello and violin arrangement in the opening was added by Gil Norton, lending the song a classical texture unlike the rough sound of what came before.
• The band's ensemble swelling suddenly just before the chorus contrasts with the quiet verses, maximizing the drop of the dynamic.
• The lyrics include a passage that counts off numbers one by one, which, overlapping with apocalyptic imagery hinting at environmental destruction, adds an ominous feeling.
• Black Francis's vocals murmur low and then soar almost to a shriek in the chorus, and this contrast is one of the moments re-created most dramatically in concert.

The signature song of Bossanova, it carries the science-fiction, dreamlike imagery the band loved straight into its sound.

• The guitar in the opening is drenched in tremolo (a technique of repeating a note rapidly, as if trembling) and reverb (echo), producing a sound as if heard from deep space.
• Black Francis lifts his voice into falsetto in the chorus, revealing a noticeably softer tone than on earlier albums.
• The passage in the middle bridge where a string arrangement slips in and then vanishes reveals a relaxed sense of arrangement absent in the Surfer Rosa days.
• The science-fiction, dreamlike imagery the band favored in this period comes through most clearly in this song's title and atmosphere.

Released as a lone digital single just after the reunion, it marked the moment Kim Deal's songwriting reached the world under the band's name once again after a long absence.

• As its title, borrowed from a comic-book sound effect, suggests, the song brims with a playful, spontaneous mood.
• Written mainly by Kim Deal, the song is driven by one of her trademark simple, repetitive bass riffs.
• Releasing just one digital single with no new album was in itself an unusual experiment for its time.
• A relatively light song, it sticks in the memory less for its lyrics than for its rhythm and the hum of its chorus.

The first studio album recorded without Kim Deal, it shows the band's decision to carry on without an original member.

• The lead track, “Bagboy,” came out as a single in 2013 ahead of the album and showcases slicker, more modern production than before.
• The guitar tone uses a thicker distortion (a sound deliberately torn and warped), leaving an impression quite different from the rough lo-fi (deliberately low-fidelity) texture of the old days.
• With newly arrived players on board, the rhythm section was judged steadier and heavier than before.
• Longtime fans were divided over how different the album was from the earlier era, and that very division was proof that the band had chosen to go on without an original member.