My personal favorite Pixies release . It seems like when it comes to the Pixies, the talk is generally "Surfer Rosa this" and "Doolittle that," and while those are certainly good albums I've never figured out why Bossanova got so much less attention than its two predecessors.  With the exception of Trompe Le Monde (which I plan on getting around to eventually, I swear) I've heard pretty much the Pixies' whole output, and out of of everything this album keeps me coming back the most often.  Bossanova turns down the noise assaults from the Pixies' earlier career down just a bit, but in their place is a more arty, spacey effort that throws some heavy surf-rock influence into the band's already wide-ranging sound.  Sure, there may not be anything that completely matches the sheer visceral immediacy of Broken Face or Tame, but for track-by-track excellence and diversity Bossanova is difficult if not impossible to top.      After the blistering, hard-rocking instrumental opener Cecilia Ann sets the tone, Bossanova immediately commences careening all over the musical map in a way the legions of alternative imitators that emerged in the 90's wouldn't even dream of.  With Black Francis screaming his head off at full volume, the angry, assaultive Rock Music sounds like Debaser on steroids, but from there the album takes a turn into more diverse and overall compelling territory that sounds little like previous albums.  Songs constantly veer off in unpredictable directions, making Bossanova more of an acquired taste than its predecessors, but it's one more than worth acquiring.  This album represents the Pixies' peak as musicians (at least to that point); the rawer edges from Surfer Rosa and Doolittle had definitely been toned down, but those albums didn't contain anything quite like the complex, Talking Heads-like rhythms of Dig For Fire or the dense, proto-grunge sheets of guitar noise of Down to the Well.  The Pixies' legendary use of dynamics was also honed to perfection here: just check out the way the whiplash guitars kick in at the perfect time in the soaring, etheral Velouria, or the way Black Francis's eery vocals and Kim Deal's crawling bassline give way to the headbanging chorus of Is She Weird.      All Over the World is one of the strangest things the Pixies ever did, a sprawling epic (by Pixies standards, anyway) filled with spacey lyrics and searing lead guitar lines from Joey Santiago that seem to come out of nowhere.  And is that a falsetto Black Francis is doing with his voice?  Well, yeah, most of the time, but it works perfectly for the song's trippy, drug-like feel.  Even when they're plowing ahead at full speed, as on Allison and Hang Wire, the band's more tuneful, surf-rock direction is apparent, but it's even more evident on pleasant, literally pacific tracks like Ana and the closing Havalina.      My enduring favorite from this album, though, would have to be Happening.  It doesn't start off all that unusually for a Pixies song, with Black Francis screaming his bizarrely imagistic lyrics on top of some slashing guitars and atomic bass riffs, but over its running time it just gets progressively eerier and more demented, with lots of surfy breaks popping up in the mix, culminating in Black Francis's stream-of-consciousness, half-spoken-half-sung mantra as the song fades out.  It's a total classic, just like this album, and essential listening for those who want to hear alternative rock from back when the label meant something
Output: POS