#311 The Best Album of 1989, Round 2 Match #65: Pixies vs. Beat Happening
Hey folks! Before we get started, please note that yesterday was the last match of Round 1, and Round 2 begins today. The end of Round 1 also marks the halfway point of the entire tournament — there’s only 128 matches in one of these things. And with each successive round half as long as the previous, let’s just say the tournament now begins to pick up rollercoaster speed. Enjoy the time we have left!
Today’s Best Album of 1989 match is:
#1 Pixies, DOOLITTLE
vs.
#65 Beat Happening, BLACK CANDY
To vote, follow this link to the Google Form. You will need a Google login to vote. If you can’t or won’t have one, let me know ASAP (either through this newsletter, my email [kentmbeeson@hey.com] or on the Best Album Brackets Bluesky account) and I’ll see what I can do.
If you missed it last time, here’s Head Cheerleader @bsglaser.bsky.social’s Designated Cheerleader on DOOLITTLE. Enjoy!
I am not here to say DOOLITTLE is a good or great album; that's (technically) subjective stuff, and anyway it got the #1 seed so plenty of people here are already convinced. What I'm here to get to is the even more important idea that DOOLITTLE is an album that is FUN and EXCITING to listen to. These are big things, and there aren't enough records that do both.
Really, we could do the whole argument via "Debaser" and be done. That intro bassline? The way the band kicks in at tempo? The wild, unhinged vocals? In just under 3 minutes, we all want to grow, up to be, be a debaser! It sounds like being a debaser will be wild! We'll watch Bunuel films and get groovy together! It's VERY EXCITING!
But it's not just "Debaser" that stirs up the excitable boys and girls. For the next half-hour or so, the band sounds both riled up and relaxed--they totally get into the groove and make the needle skip at every opportunity. This rhythm section is built for movement, the guitars never stop spitting out surprises, and the vocals sound like smiles and sneers and gulps and guffaws and kicks and kisses and everything that is right and wrong and in-between. Pray for the man in the middle.
They kinda try pop moves ("Monkey Gone to Heaven," "La La Love You," "Here Comes Your Man") and anti-pop ("Tame," "I Bleed," "Crackity Jones"), and every one of the songs has its own internal logic that makes no sense at all. As it jumps from track to track, the whole record is FUN! It's EXCITING! I listen to a ton of music, and while I can argue that most of it is very good or even great, tbh, a lot of it isn't FUN. This is. It's great to have fun listening to a record! I wish it happened more.
So forget the interpersonal dynamics of the band, or the Pixies records that came before or after. For 39 minutes, Black Francis, Kim Deal, Joey Santiago*, and David Lovering are plugged directly into the socket, pouring blood and silver into every bit of DOOLITTLE. Have FUN! Be EXCITED! Stay all day, if you want to!
(*Disclaimer: My wife's cousin's wife's sister used to be married to Joey Santiago, so he is Cousin Joey and we are family.)
Thanks, Brian!
Click here to see the current results for the entire tournament, and click here to see the current results for the prediction bracket contest.
Yesterday, #43 Spacemen 3, PLAYING WITH FIRE defeated #86 Pere Ubu, CLOUDLAND, 63-49-2.
Oh hey, this is newsletter #311, so you know what that means!
If I ever didn't thank you-you, then just let me do it now.
Kent