Doolittle (album)

Doolittle is the second studio album by the American alternative rock band Pixies, released on April 17, 1989, on 4AD records. It was an instant critical success and became their breakthrough album. It was especially well received in Europe, where the British music weeklies Melody Maker and Sounds named it their album of the year. Its idiosyncratic lyrics were written by the Pixies' main songwriter and lead vocalist Black Francis and allude to surrealist imagery, biblical violence, and descriptions of torture and death.

The album is praised for its "quiet/loud" dynamic, achieved through subdued verses founded on Kim Deal's bass patterns and David Lovering's drums. It reaches peaks in tone and volume through the addition of distorted guitars by Francis and Joey Santiago. This technique was influential in the development of the early 1990s grunge music; Kurt Cobain said that Doolittle was one of his favorite records and that its songs heavily influenced "Smells Like Teen Spirit".

Upon its release, it 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 Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart in the US, while many of the album's tracks, including "Debaser" and "Hey", remain favorites of both critics and fans.

Background
The band's 1988 album Surfer Rosa was better received in the United Kingdom than in the United States. In support of its release, the band did a short tour of Europe with fellow Bostonians Throwing Muses, where according to a critic for Melody Maker, they were "welcomed like gods, which I felt underestimated them somewhat." The band were given multiple cover photographs in the weekly UK music magazine, as the album topped the NME's Indie Chart.

Versions of the songs that would later appear on Doolittle—including "Dead", "Hey", "Tame" and "There Goes My Gun"—were recorded in the second half of 1998 during several sessions for John Peel's radio show, and "Hey" appeared on a free EP circulated with a 1988 edition of Sounds. The first demos were recorded in 1988 at the Eden Sound recording studio in Boston, during a break from the band's touring schedule. They recorded there for a week. The group's frontman and main songwriter Black Francis gave the upcoming album the provisional title of Whore, which he later claimed 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 earlier worked with Norton on the single version of "Gigantic" in May 1988, and Francis had no preference. Ivo Watts-Russell, head of the band's label 4AD, chose Norton to produce the 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 song's structures and arrangements and two weeks in pre-production as Norton familiarized himself with the Pixies' sound.

Recording and production
The recording sessions began on October 31, 1988, in Boston at Downtown Recorders, then a 24-track studio. 4AD gave the Pixies a budget of $40,000 (approximately $ today), excluding producer's fees. This was a relatively modest sum for a large late-1980s indie label, but four times the amount spent on their debut, Surfer Rosa. The three weeks sessions began on November 28 at Carriage House Studios, a residential studio in Stamford, Connecticut. Norton was assisted by two assistant recording engineers and two second assistants. He hired Steven Haigler as mixing engineer, who he had earlier worked with at Fort Apache Studios.

Francis brought a mixture of newly written and older tracks to the recording sessions. Many of the newer tracks were underdeveloped and, according to Norton, consisted of minute or minute and half "ditties" consisting of short bursts of "verse, chorus, verse, beat-beat-beat-bang....finished". As producer and arranger, Norton says 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 the album's final 15 tracks are longer than three minutes.

During the final mixing, Norton smoothed out the band's rough edges via 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 a similar approach with 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; at Norton's advice, Francis slowed the tempo, while "Debaser" was given an extended coda. His 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 minutes or three minutes long, justifying why his songs should be kept short. He later admitted that he knew that Norton was trying to give the band a more commercial sound while he wanted the band to retain the underground sound achieved with Albini.

Tension between Francis and Deal was visible 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, recalls that the band dynamic "went from just all fun to work" during the production. Production continued until December 12, 1988, while Norton and Haigler mixed the album. During this period, Santiago became unhappy as he felt Norton was adding too much reverb to his guitar parts. In protest, he covered his Marshall guitar amplifiers with blankets to make clear that 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 is markedly different from Albini's recording of Surfer Rosa and is far more polished than the debut's ambient and raw recordings. Albini's recording emphasized 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.

Two of the songs are based on Old Testament stories of sex and death: the story of David and Bathsheba in "Dead", and Samson and Delilah in "Gouge Away". Francis's fascination with Biblical themes is traced back to his teenage years; when he was twelve, he and his parents joined the Pentecostal church. Such imagery is also prevalent in "Monkey Gone to Heaven", where using numerology, Francis describes the Devil as being "six" and God as "seven".

Side one
The album opens with "Debaser", described as a "noisy surf-punk" song and widely considered instrumental in their 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. A live favorite, the track contains an extended coda where the bassline is overlain with, according to the music critic Rob Hughes, Santiago's "frenzied guitar riffage...at full tilt as the song hurtles to its climax". Written while an anthropology student at University of Massachusetts Amherst, Francis's lyrics referring to "slicing up eyeballs" refer to Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí's 1929 film Un Chien Andalou. He has said that 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 which include an E7♯9 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 the word "tame". Along with "Gouge Away", the track is regarded as one of the peaks of the 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 seen in the Nirvana tracks "In Bloom" and "Heart-Shaped Box". The track ends with Francis and Deal repeatedly grunting in a sound suggesting two people having sex.

The lyrics for "Wave of Mutilation" are based on contemporary newspaper reports of Japanese men committing murder–suicide after unsuccessful business ventures, in a scene Francis describes as them being forced into driving "off a pier into the ocean." Imagery involving drowning and oceans also appear 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", it was described by Rolling Stone critic Chris Mundy as a melodic and "outright pop song". It was first recorded for the Purple tapes sessions, a version described by the music writer Phil Udell as rough "around the edges". The album version was rearranged by Norton.

Side one closes with the album's first single, "Monkey Gone to Heaven". Written in D major, it opens with Francis playing a short chord progression backed by Deal's bass guitar. The track is over-dubbed with cellos and violins which made Norton nervous because it took the band "outside [their] usual parameters" that they had earlier believed "we weren't ever going to do on a Pixies song". "Monkey Gone to Heaven" describes the impact of human-caused environmental destruction on the ocean. Francis said that "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 described as both "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 partly sung in Spanish and incorporates G♯ and A triads over a C♯ pedal. Francis's rhythm guitar starts with an eighth-note downstroke 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.

The whimsical track "La La Love You" is sung by the band's drummer David Lovering in a baritone voice, intended as a satire of the 1950s crooning style. Francis asked Lovering to sing it in a voice resembling Ringo Starr's 1960s tongue-in-cheek vocals. Its vocal style and simplistic lyrics (including the line "first base, second base, third base, home run") were intended as a parody of crude sex jokes. Since it was his only time providing vocals for a Pixies track, Lovering admits that on the day of recording, he was so nervous that he "[knocked back] a lot of vodka".

The penultimate song, "Silver," was co-written with Deal, who sings the lead vocal line. The track is built around a country music riff played on slide guitar, described by critics as "sparse" and "eerie" in a manner reminiscent of soundtracks for late–1960s spaghetti westerns. Critics consider the track as lacking in melody and dynamics and it is often considered the weakest song on the album.

The lyrics of the closing song "Gouge Away" are based on the Old Testament story of Samson's betrayal by Delilah. Although the music follows the quiet/loud formula, the build-up to the loud part is more gradual and nuanced than in tracks such as "Debaser" and "Tame". The track is built on Deal's three-note bass part (G♯/B/E) and a tight Lovering drum pattern which has been described by Sisario as a "kind of gothic dance groove". Deal, who also contributes backing vocals, is accompanied in the bridge by Santiago, playing B♭ and C notes before ending on G♯ as the chorus begins. The "loud part" occurs in the verses, when both Santiago and Francis follow the bass progression using heavily distorted guitar chords.

Artwork and title


The artwork was designed by photographer Simon Larbalestier and graphic artist Vaughan Oliver who had worked on the Pixies' previous albums, Come on Pilgrim and Surfer Rosa. According to Larbalestier, Doolittle was the first album where he and Oliver had access to the lyrics which "made a fundamental difference". Both Oliver and Francis wanted macabre and surreal images to illustrate the album. The images are placed in pairs, with each juxtaposing two principle elements such as a monkey and halo for Monkey Gone to Heaven, a pelvic bone and stiletto for "Tame", and a spoon containing hair laid across a woman's torso for "Gouge Away".

Around the time Oliver decided on the cover art, Francis discarded the album's working title Whore, worrying that "people were going to think I was some kind of anti-Catholic or that I'd been raised Catholic and trying to get into this Catholic naughty-boy stuff...A monkey with a halo, calling it Whore, that would bring all kinds of shit that wouldn't be true. So I said I'd change the title."

Release
The American label Elektra Records began to take interest in the Pixies around October 1988 and signed the band following a bidding war. The label then negotiated with the Pixies' British label 4AD, which held their worldwide distribution rights. Elektra released a promotional live album containing the album tracks "Debaser" and "Gouge Away" along with earlier material. In early April, two weeks before Doolittle released, Elektra closed a deal with 4AD that allowed them full US distribution rights—PolyGram had already secured Canadian rights.

Doolittle was released in the UK on April 17, 1989, and in the US the following day. Elektra's major label secured retail displays across the US. The label also exposed the album's lead single, "Monkey Gone to Heaven", to key major and local radio stations. On the week of release, the album reached number eight on the UK Albums Chart, but was left at number 171 on the US Billboard 200. With the help of college radio-play of "Monkey Gone to Heaven", it eventually rose to number 98, spending two weeks in the Top 100. Doolittle sold steadily in America, breaking sales of 100,000 after six months. By early 1992, while the band was supporting U2 on their Zoo TV Tour, the album was selling 1,500 copies per week. By the middle of 1993—two years after the release of Trompe le Monde—their last album before their initial breakup—Doolittle was selling an average of 1,200 copies per week. It was certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America in 1995 and Platinum in 2018.

The album's success, and especially its heavy rotation on MTV, had a significant impact on the band members. According to Santiago, its sales "validated the career my parents didn’t think I had. When they first saw me on MTV, they went: 'Ah, okay. You’re not just playing shitty nightclubs!'" Francis recalls that shortly after the album came out, he was pulled over by border police near the Mexican border in Texas while in possession of marijuana. One of the officers recognized him from MTV, and minutes later he was posing with them for photographs while holding a shotgun.

Reception
Following the critically acclaimed Surfer Rosa, the album was highly anticipated. It received near-universal positive reviews, especially from the UK and European music press. NME Edwin Pouncey wrote that "the songs on Doolittle have the power to make you literally jump out of your skin with excitement". He singled out "Debaser" as one of the highlights, describing it as "blessed with the kind of beefy bass hook that originally brought "Gigantic" to life". Q critic Peter Kane wrote that the album's "carefully structured noise and straightforward rhythmic insistence makes perfect sense". Robert Christgau of The Village Voice wrote, "They're in love and they don't know why—with rock and roll, which is heartening in a time when so many college dropouts have lost touch with the verities."

The album appeared on several contemporary end-of-year "Best Album" lists. Both Rolling Stone and The Village Voice placed the album tenth, and music magazines Sounds and Melody Maker placed the album as their album of the year. NME ranked the album fourth in their end-of-year list.

Legacy
Doolittle is widely regarded as one of the key alternative rock albums of the 1980s. A 2002 Rolling Stone review gave it the maximum score of five stars, writing that it laid the "groundwork for Nineties rock". It was included in critic Robert Dimery's influential book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. PopMatters included it in their list of the "12 Essential 1980s Alternative Rock Albums" saying, "Doolittle captured the musicians at the top of their game". In a 2017 survey, Pitchfork ranked it as the fourth-best album of the 1980s; a 2003 poll of NME writers ranked Doolittle as the second-greatest album of all time; and Rolling Stone placed the album at 141 on its 2020 list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time".

The album established the Pixies' loud–quiet dynamic, which became highly influential on alternative rock. After writing "Smells Like Teen Spirit", both Cobain and Krist Novoselic of Nirvana thought: "this really sounds like the Pixies. People are really going to nail us for this." Norton was frequently credited with capturing the album's dynamics and became highly sought after by bands wishing to achieve a similar sound. The English musician PJ Harvey admits to being "in awe" of "I Bleed" and "Tame", and described Francis's writing as "amazing".

Ten years after the band's breakup, Doolittle continued to sell between 500 and 1,000 copies a week, and following their 2004 reunion tour sales reached 1,200 copies per week. At the end of 2005, best estimates put total US sales at between 800,000 and 1,000,000 copies. As of 2015, sales in the United States have exceeded 834,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

The band released several singles from the album after their initial breakup. In 1997, "Debaser" was released to promote the Death to the Pixies compilation. In June 1989, 4AD released "Here Comes Your Man" as the album's second single. It reached number three on the US Modern Rock Tracks chart and number 54 in the UK Singles Chart. On May 6, 2019, "Here Comes Your Man" was certified Gold in Canada; "Hey" was certified Gold in Canada on September 20, 2021.

Track listing
All tracks were written by Black Francis, except "Silver", written by Black Francis and Kim Deal.

Reissues
To mark the 25th anniversary of the album, 4AD released Doolittle 25, which added unreleased B-sides, demos and two full Peel sessions for the BBC. On December 9, 2016, a Pure Audio Blu-Ray version of the album was released, containing a 5.1 surround sound mix by Kevin Vanbergen and a high-definition stereo mix by Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab. In 2022, the album was formatted for Spatial Audio with Dolby Atmos and released on Apple Music.

Personnel
Credits adapted from the liner notes of Doolittle.

Pixies
 * Black Francis – vocals, rhythm guitar, acoustic guitar
 * Kim Deal – bass guitar, vocals, acoustic slide guitar ("Silver")
 * Joey Santiago – lead guitar, backing vocals
 * David Lovering – drums, lead vocal ("La La Love You"), bass guitar ("Silver")

Additional musicians
 * Karen Karlsrud – violin ("Monkey Gone to Heaven")
 * Corine Metter – violin ("Monkey Gone to Heaven")
 * Arthur Fiacco – cello ("Monkey Gone to Heaven")
 * Ann Rorich – cello ("Monkey Gone to Heaven")

Technical
 * Gil Norton – producer, engineer
 * Dave Snider – assistant engineer
 * Matt Lane – assistant engineer
 * Steve Haigler – mixing
 * Vaughan Oliver – art direction, sleeve design
 * Simon Larbalestier – photography
 * Chris Bigg – calligraphy