Heather Phares (All Music Guide)

After 1988's brilliant but abrasive Surfer Rosa, the Pixies' sound couldn't get much more extreme. Their Elektra debut, Doolittle, reins in the noise in favor of pop songcraft and accessibility. Producer Gil Norton's sonic sheen adds some polish, but Black Francis' tighter songwriting focuses the group's attack. Doolittle's most ferocious moments, like "Dead," a visceral retelling of David and Bathsheba's affair — are more stylized than the group's past outbursts. Meanwhile, their poppy side surfaces on the irresistible single "Here Comes Your Man" and the sweetly surreal love song "La La Love You." The Pixies' arty, noisy weirdness mix with just enough hooks to produce gleefully demented singles like "Debaser," — inspired by Bunuel's classic surrealist short Un Chien Andalou — and "Wave of Mutilation," their surfy ode to driving a car into the sea. Though Doolittle's sound is cleaner and smoother than the Pixies' earlier albums, there are still plenty of weird, abrasive vignettes: the blankly psychotic "There Goes My Gun," "Crackity Jones," a song about a crazy roommate Francis had in Puerto Rico, and the nihilistic finale "Gouge Away." Meanwhile, "Tame," and "I Bleed" continue the Pixies' penchant for cryptic kink. But the album doesn't just refine the Pixies' sound; they also expand their range on the brooding, wannabe spaghetti western theme "Silver" and the strangely theatrical "Mr. Grieves." "Hey" and "Monkey Gone to Heaven," on the other hand, stretch Francis' lyrical horizons: "Monkey"'s elliptical environmentalism and "Hey"'s twisted longing are the Pixies' versions of message songs and romantic ballads. Their most accessible album, Doolittle's wide-ranging moods and sounds make it one of their most eclectic and ambitious. A fun, freaky alternative to most other late-'80s college rock, it's easy to see why the album made the Pixies into underground rock stars.

Dan Leone (Amazon.com)

Yeah, Kim Deal made a big splash of her own, and Frank Black is still holding his own. But as any Pixies fan will tell you, and as Doolittle suggests (like "ten million pounds of sludge" to the head), the Pixies rocked harder than the sum of their parts. They were masters of dynamics (check out "Monkey Gone to Heaven," or "Hey"), moving from quietly subdued to all-out head-banging and back before you could say "la la love you." Black Francis was one of the most unique vocal stylists of the '80s. His duets with bassist Deal, "I Bleed" and "Silver," work the way Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong worked together. And it's still staggering how much Joey Santiago, lead guitarist, could accomplish with one simple, single note. "Here Comes Your Man," by the way, is as straightforwardly poppy as the Pixies ever got, so enjoy it.

Charlie Porter (Amazon.co.uk)

If you want to plot a classic rise and fall pattern in the career of a band, look no further than the Pixies. This middle album, third of five, is the pinnacle of their noise equation: taut, terrifying and tightly edited, these 15 tracks (best known: "Monkey Gone To Heaven"; best quality, the insane "Debaser"; or the predatory "Hey") have the confidence that was missing from Come On Pilgrim and Surfer Rosa, but without the bloated pomp of Bossanova or Trompe Le Monde. Black Francis, as Charles Thompson IV was known then, surfs fast with his and Joey Santiago's guitars, tempered by the groundswell of Kim Deal's fine bass and counter vocals. It is like the last stand of US indie-dom: intelligent music encased in its precious, intricate and trademark Vaughn Oliver sleeve.

(CD Universe)

The Pixies: Black Francis (vocals, guitar); Kim Deal (vocals, slide guitar, bass); David Lovering (vocals, bass, drums); Joey Santiago (guitar).
Additional personnel: Karen Karlsrud, Corine Metter (violin); Arthur Fiacco, Ann Rorich (cello).
Recorded at Downtown Recorders, Boston, Massachusetts.

From the opening bars of DOOLITTLE, the Pixies' brilliant duality comes into focus. Chiming guitar streaks waft over an AOR-ready riff, while vocals bark out references to a deliberately obscure culture. "Debaser," for instance, finds singer/songwriter Black Francis alluding to "Chien Andalou," Spanish director Luis Bunuel's surrealist film renowned for a scene where an eyeball is sliced.
The Pixies' calling card is their calculated sonic mayhem. Francis and bass player Kim Deal weave vocal harmonies of inimitable dissonance as guitarist Joey Santiago's leads ring like air-raid sirens. DOOLITTLE perfectly captures The Pixies' refusal to be categorized into one form of musical identity. The album's most gorgeous melody is wrapped around the words "cease to exist, giving my goodbye," and crowned with the title "Wave Of Mutilation." The rest of the album follows suit, and even the love songs bear Francis' warped humor, boasting titles like "Tame" and "Dead."
DOOLITTLE is quintessential Pixies. Unflinching in their abrasion, the group created some of the best, most intriguing rock music of the early 1990s.

(CMJ New Music Report, issue 168, April 21, 1989)

The Pixies are cooler than death. While the hooks here are not as immediately jostling as "Gigantic" or "Where Is My Mind" from last year's Surfer Rosa LP, they're every bit as dangerous and lethal once they work their way into your veins. Cuts like "Wave Of Mutilation," "Gouge Away" or "Here Comes Your Man" don't immediately leap out of the speakers and box you on the ears, but the hooks and how they are layered and built up (as in the deft use of strings and crunching guitar on "Monkey Gone To Heaven" or the slow escalation of "Mr. Grieves") reveal a level of craft and thought that goes light years beyond mere quirkiness. Black Francis' trademark yelping and panting are as prominent as ever (few other than he could ever come up with pixilations like "All around, the vampires feed/And I bleed" or "Slicing up eyeballs/Oh ho ho ho"), while the gargantuan throbbing basslines and chilling harmonies of the infamous Mrs. John Murphy propel Black Francis' monster riffs along with unbridled fury. Other straight-razor, shower scene from Psycho cuts include "Silver," "#13 Baby," and the curious surf riffs of "Here Comes Your Man."

Cara Wallis (Ink Blot Magazine)

To many Pixies fans, Doolittle, their third record (second full-length), is the band at their peak. It’s got everything the Pixies became legendary for: all the drama and comedy, guts and glory, harsh shrieks and beautiful melodies.

So much has already been written about this record – "Gouge Away" was cited by Kurt Cobain as the inspiration for "Smells Like Teen Spirit;" "Debaser," the lead track, is based on the Salvador Dali/Louis Buñuel movie, "Un Chien Andalou," and is also, by the way, the only pop song that I know of where you find yourself merrily singing along about slicing up eyeballs without feeling the least bit ghoulish.

The bizzaro lyrics, the musical diversity, Black Francis’ howl, the awesome melodic bass lines and vocal harmonies of Kim Deal, all of it set the tone for the "alternative" bands of the ‘90s. Clocking in at under 40 minutes, this record gives you pop, punk, surf rock, the bluesy "Silver," and the glammy "No. 13 Baby" served up as only the Pixies could. The band’s biggest "hit," the hooky (and some say hokey) "Here Comes Your Man" is also on this record. In short, Doolittle is simply a must-have for anyone who calls themselves not an alternative rock fan, but a music fan.

(New Musical Express)

That little monkey with the halo hot-wired to its tiny skull - the central image for both the Pixies' latest single and this, their second LP - could almost be a cryptic clue to what exactly makes this band tick.
Cute and mischievous for sure, angelic...perhaps, but there's certainly something darker and stranger at play within the Pixies' magical, musical circle. Peel back that little monkey's scalp and you'll probably be both appalled and fascinated at the tumour of evil genius that's squirming there.
Mishear one of these lyrics and, while you're optimistically humming along, something altogether different is in the mind of these little devils. While you're Pixies-led into thinking about "jubilation" they're really mouthing "mutilation"...spot the difference? Nothing is quite, thankfully, what it at first seems on 'Doolittle' and that's exactly what gives it a razor edge.
These Pixies from Boston have laid open their secrets with 'Doolittle' by including a beautifully produced lyric booklet with the initial 30,000 copies (quick kids before they fly away!), a slick and artistic grimoire which mates the words of 'Doolittle' together with Simon Larbalestier's portraits of demented decay.
The images herein are bloated with Blue Velvet surrealistic dreamscape. Larbalestier's rot-riddled images in their sepia tones echo the effects of such surrealist photographers as Man Ray or Hans Bellmer, two artists who were more than aware of the monster that lie submerged beneath the dark depths of the human subconscious.
As a mere give-away however, it's a bonus, and great fun can be had turning the pages to try and relate which image goes with which song. More valid and worthwhile than some other dumb consolation prize as it opens up another door in the Pixies' psyche.
So just what does give on 'Doolittle'? The surrealistic show of sepia splendour that floods the lyric booklet overflows with a vengeance to seep into the very songs themselves. There are 15 of them, each neatly numbered and labelled like the exhibits of some eccentric travelling museum. 'Debaser', which kicks off, is blessed with the kind of beefy bass hook that originally brought 'Gigantic' to life.
Black Francis leaps into action and plunges into a lyric that transforms Dali/Bunuel's film script of Un Chien Andalou into a three minute pop song. Complete with razored eyeball reference, it is an astonishing achievement.
Equally thrilling, positively unnerving, is 'Tame' where the rabid pant of a serial killer is superimposed over Kim Deal's breathlessly passionate backing vocal to create a highly potent mix of emotions. More amusing is the fact that Black Francis manages to make his voice sound the spit of veteran Hollywood bad guy Peter Lorre! On purpose? I'd dearly love to know.
Personally I find Black Francis's lyrics, together with the various ways he chooses to translate them, a delight.
He manages to push a kind of Beefheartian naivety into his work that suggests a love affair with the very language he is dabbling in. So who cares if all the words don't appear to fit together properly, or that the picture they eventually show is slightly blurred and chaotic? It all adds to the originality and charm of the band who bring such visions to life.
Black Francis' songs here seem to have an almost 'speaking in tongues' quality to them, as though an invisible presence has gently guided his band in an attempt to get through from some phantom zone. How else can the crackling static bones of such spectres as 'Crackity Jones' or 'Mr Grieves' be explained as they whoop and roar out of this record to shake their raggedy fists in your face? The songs on 'Doolittle' have the power to make you literally jump out of your skin with excitement.
From seemingly nowhere the Pixies manage to concoct something that ultimately builds into an epic on a miniature scale. The wonderful 'Monkey Gone To Heaven' is laced with lush but unobtrusive strings which nibble round the edge of the song and push it into a new realm of arrangement for the band. The opportunity to give 'Monkey' the full Philharmonic treatment, complete with heavenly harp, must have been a temptation to them. Wisely such a folly has been resisted.
'Monkey' is the most immediate song to ring out as a single on 'Doolittle' and (if indeed it is their intention) it will be interesting to see which song they decide to push individually next time round. My bet is on 'There Goes My Gun' which sounds like a sure shot to me with its Duane Eddy meets Ennio Morricone guitar twang.
Whatever they decide, the Pixies' popularity shows no sign of waning just yet and, as 'Doolittle' positively underlines, there is no shortage of ideas. Good news not only for Pixies fans but for the state of independent music as a whole. I can think of no finer role models than these Bostonian imps of the perverse.

Peter Kane (Q Magazine, december 2000)

The aptly named Frank Black can justifiably boast one of the most troubled psyches currently at work on the margins of American rock. As linchpin of Boston's Pixies his muse is darkness itself: a eureka-screeching, snorting beast with the sort of wild and foaming mouth designed to scare the pants off those of a faintly nervous disposition. But no matter what grim hue his tales of madness, mortality, impalement or carnal grinding take on, there's often a glint in the eye to suggest that something other than literal interpretation is called for. How else to explain the immolating demands of Gouge Away, not to mention Wave Of Mutilation or, most explicit of all, Dead? This is clearly the stuff of classic obsessive teen horror nastiness set to a soundtrack of growling guitars somewhere on the outroads between Sonic Youth's metal howling and uninhibited hardcore. It's not pretty, but its carefully structured noise and straight forward rhythm insistence makes perfect sense: a gut feeling that is doubled when it gets within sniffing distance of a tune, as on Monkey Gone To Heaven or Debaser. If the Come On Pilgrim mini-album and last year's Surfer Rosa were hard acts to follow, then Doolittle is a massive 15-track affirmation of mushrooming Pixies power.

Mark Kemp (Rolling Stone, issue 910, November 28, 2002)

As Kurt Cobain readily told anyone who cared to hear, Nirvana's Nevermind wouldn't have happened without the Pixies' Doolittle. When it came out in 1989, the Pixies' abrasive guitars and twisted, nightmarish vision were eclipsed by the bad-boy cool of Guns n' Roses and the frothy pop of Fine Young Cannibals. For angry, punk self-reflection, you had to comb the indie underground.
The Pixies changed all that, and with Doolittle laid the groundwork for Nineties rock. The album's breathtaking mix of noisy, almost surflike guitars, sweet pop melodies and primal-scream-therapy vocals inspired a generation of would-be rock stars: Nirvana adopted the Pixies use of quiet, mumbled verses and loud, crashing choruses, Courtney Love aped their banshee wails, and Beck drew inspiration from their catalog of surrealistic lyrics.

Doolittle chugs into action on a New Wave bass line and frontman Black Francis' adrenalized barking about a weird scene from a Luis Bu–uel movie. "Debaser," with its cool, crisp guitar line and lyrics about "slicing up eyeballs," sets the tone of the album. From there, the band careens back and forth from menacing to melodic, as Francis and bassist Kim Deal screech, snort and coo their way through tunes such as "Wave of Mutilation," "I Bleed," "Dead" and "Gouge Away.

" Despite the bizarrely violent song titles, the Pixies were schoolyard nerds at heart -- the only person Francis was scaring with his lyrics was himself. They turned out to be prescient: Within five years, awkward pop stars from Pavement to Weezer represented the new cool, and "Monkey Gone to Heaven" and "Here Comes Your Man" were classics.

© Frank Steven Groen