Go, go little record go
It is named by
Some guy named Joe (Trompe Le Monde)
And redneckers they get us pissed
And stupid stuff it makes us shout
Oh dance with me, oh don’t be shy
Oh kiss me cunt and kiss me cock
Oh kiss the world, oh kiss the sky
Oh kiss my ass, oh let it rock (U-Mass)
Roll over Bobby Dylan and tell Leonard Lennon the news, that’s what real music wordies look like. I’m playing Pixies Trompe Le Monde tonight, an LP I first bought 19 years ago and I can honestly say I have never enjoyed it as much as I am enjoying it right here and now. That’s a nice thing to be able to write.
Being an insufferable tool I decided, totally unheard, that the Pixies were crap mostly based on the fact that they were hugely popular when I was at university and the two guys I knew who were most into them were, slightly differently faceted, insufferable tools. So I only got into them way after the fact, then found out that I’d missed out on just one of the greatest bands of my lifetime as a result. Way to go Joe.
Trompe Le Monde was the last Pixies LP I picked up, in 1998 and I remember really liking two tracks and thinking it was missing the tunes of its’ predecessors. As a result I’ve probably only played it about 10 times ever, if that. I also bought it at a very low time in my life and so it was probably tainted for me by association.
Blasting it out tonight I am just aghast at how LOUD it all is, how much MORE, how much PLUS the whole album is. I remember the Pixies teasing the music press that Trompe Le Monde was going to be their heavy metal album, it ain’t but they borrowed our casual attitude to all needles in the red unsubtlety. Mostly. The big hitters are right there on queue, the spasming Venusian surf-rock of ‘Planet of Sound’, the sheer soak-your-underpants-in-whiskey-and-dance-in-the-fire beastliness of ‘U-Mass’ and the rockin’ Jesus & Mary Chain cover ‘Head On’. Separately and cumilatively these bad boys are reason enough to own this vinyl but that really isn’t the whole story.
Take ‘Lovely Day’, probably nobody’s favourite Pixies song, I love it because it is so taut and tense and yet so poppy it sounds like a gang of recently-escaped scalpel-wielding madmen trying to cover ‘You Can’t Hurry Love’ for no good reason whatsoever. Similarly, I am much taken with the gorgeous ‘Bird Dream of the Olympus Mons’ which is less about the titular Martian volcano and much more about a drug low; ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’ for the industrial solvent using generation.
The fact that ‘… Mons’ disintegrates into the angular, unfriendly mission statement of ‘Space (I Believe in)’ is a masterful little bit of sequencing. It’s a great track too, Kim Deal’s most tangible presence on the LP*, both in terms of backing vox and some great bass playing. Anyway what mortal could resist the chorus of ‘Jefrey with one f’? why would you want to?
My fave track on Trompe Le Monde is the wickedly sarcastic, wilfully audience-baiting ‘Subbacultcha’, the only track on the LP where Frank Black sings it in his patented sex offender whine – always a highlight. It just skewers the whole alt-rock crowd beautifully, ‘I was wearing eyeliner / She was wearing eyeliner’, which didn’t stop them loving it of course**. It’s funny, mean-spirited and unique – the Pixies in a nutshell. Way to go Joe!
Okay, so there’s a lot of lesser bits sprinkled across the plastic, but we’re all about the good stuff here at 1537. Trompe Le Monde was a great stopping place for the Pixies^, all their melodic strengths and awkward fury being displayed for us to gawk at one more time. Rarely bettered, never tamed, what a band. Take it away with those music words, one more time:
This ain’t the planet of sound
This ain’t the planet of sound
This ain’t the planet of sound
This ain’t the planet of sound
This ain’t no rock and roll town
This ain’t no fuckin’ around
780 Down.
*she seemed a bit sidelined by this point in the Pixies, or maybe she was saving her powers for the Breeders?
**have some more:
I was hoping to have her in the sack
I was looking handsome
She was looking like an erotic vulture
I was all dressed in black
She was all dressed up in black
^I haven’t explored their newer/post-break up stuff, too afraid that they’d just prove to be another bunch of mere mortals, I don’t want that reality – I want Gods and heroes to worship.