How I came to love "Le Monde" or Sci-Fi Hi-Fi Surf-Rock Supernova
Written: Jan 23 '00
Product Rating:
Pros: They created a whole new sense of possibility, a completely new fusion of cool, space age noise and rock.
Cons: The aesthetic that they created is often better than the songs themselves - there are a number of duds on the album, which is held together by the phenomenal strength of the several classic songs.
Barbelith's Full Review: Trompe Le Monde by The Pixies
It took me a while to fall for the charms of the Pixies, but when I fell I fell hard. I had just missed the release of Trompe Le Monde when I'd got to University but knew nothing about it, nor indeed indie rock generally.
Of my main groups of friends, there were those who were obsessed with bands like The Mission, The Sisters of Mercy and Fields of the Nephilim (I thought they were insane), there were those that were intoxicated by the Madchester thing and the emerging dance music (I thought they were naff) and those who were into REM and Tom Petty. Of all the groups I felt most closely affiliated with the last lot, but I felt there was something missing, a kind of sexiness, hardness or glamour that they were all overlooking. I went all over *conventional* pop music looking for it - Bruce Springsteen (thrown away in horror), Kate Bush (kept a couple, got bored), Peter Gabriel (thought he was creative but sounded worthy and sterile) etc etc etc. There was no limit to the musical depths that I wouldn't plumb in order to find something that got me excited.
But it had never occured to me to listen to indie rock music until I was introduced to the Throwing Muses by a friend I was living with. And from them I listened to Belly, and from them The Breeders and finally I discovered the Pixies.
It was like a revelation - here was a band that managed to produce songs that you could dance to, that weren't worthy or dull or earnest (this was the early 90s remember), were rocky without being crotch-grabbingly big-haired Bon-Jovi-ites and managed to incorporate this surf/sci-fi/art-school ideology/aesthetic into everything they did.
Trompe Le Monde was their final album, and their most bizarre. It follows Bossanova which was pretty successful but a bit flat and badly produced. It was touted as being their "Heavy Metal" album, a rumour that was enforced by the release of Planet of Sound as their first single from it. When it was released though it was clear that it was something else altogether. There was so much energy in it, too much at times, and a resolute determination to do something INTERESTING. You can really feel Black Francis chomping at the bit to make something new - to do something different - and this feeling energises the album just as it eventually led to him disbanding the group.
It's not a consistent album (the title of the album means "Fool the World" which at times it feels like it is trying to do) - there are a number of dud songs - but it brought with it ideas and a whole new aesthetic of noise that (when at its best) produced absolute classics like Planet of Sound, Subbacultcha, Bird Dream of the Olympus Mons and Alec Eiffel. These songs hold the album together.
A flawed classic.
TROMPE LE MONDE ****
A high energy introduction to the album which is as likely to throw you off kilter as inspire you to dance, Trompe le Monde was a no-compromise introduction to the band's new hi/sci-fi rock aesthetic.
PLANET OF SOUND *****
A great slithering bass movement roams behind Black Francis, with occasional erupting choruses which sound like a combination of thrash metal, the beach boys and alien horror movies.
ALEC EIFFEL ****
It just goes to show that you don't need misery and lovelorn lyrics to make a decent record. Alec Eiffel is about the 'pioneer of aerodynamics' who designed Paris' Eiffel tower. It's one of the most overtly poppy and cheerful songs that the Pixies ever recorded. All the standard Pixies characteristics are there - unconventional song structures, choppy guitar strokes and an overwhelming sense of total supreme cool.
THE SAD PUNK **1/2
You're listening to "Trompe le Monde" (the album that is) and you've just had a batch of three relatively easy to assimilate songs. Admittedly you've been thrown off a couple of times by the way they seem to spiral slightly out of control, but you've generally handled it. Until now. The Sad Punk is an odd song - the shouty bits are pushed to the limit, the "poignant" bits are similarly extreme. Somehow it doesn't quite work - it's too try-hard (and frankly the song's title is dismal).
HEAD ON ***1/2
The weird thing about hearing a cover like this half way through a Pixies album is that it really demonstrates how different their sound was from all of their contemporaries in Indie-land. I mean the Jesus and Mary Chain were good, but they wrote ... well ... songs! In and of itself this is a great track, but it seems strangely placed on the album.
U-MASS *****
I dare you not to feel your hips move to the riff. The greatest song ever written about a University is one of the most bizarrely constructed pieces of total class you'll ever come across. What seems to be an incredibly sexy verse portion just keeps on going, pushing itself way past the point where you would normally get bored and frustrated. And then just when you think you will punch your hand through the stereo it completely flies apart in a big shouty chorus, before resolving itself straight back into the big riff that started it all off. Wonderful if bizarre.
PALACE OF THE BRINE ***1/2
A nice little song which is never given time to develop as just when you think it will get going it segues into...
LETTER TO MEMPHIS ***
The introduction to the song is so long (and borders on AOR) that it feels like Palace of The Brine is having an extended bridge section. So when the singing starts you are already inevitably disconcerted. It's carried along by the overwhelming feel of the album, but isn't much to listen to.
BIRD DREAM OF THE OLYMPUS MONS *****
One of the Pixies simplest baselines carries a whistful lyric up to and over a choppy guitar riff. The production keeps the Elvis aspect under control so you are carried along rather than overwhelmed when the song builds. Like so many of the songs on Trompe Le Monde, it doesn't seem to go as far as it should - it feels like a fragment - but it's a bloody good fragment.
SPACE (I BELIEVE IN) ***1/2
It's Kiss on Mescaline! Well - that's how it sounds when it begins, before it retreats into a throbbing bass and trash choruses. It's almost Pixies by numbers (although that's a hell of a lot better than most people ever aspire to) but it is "saved" (!?) from mediocrity by having the most un-song-like lyrics you can imagine. "Jefrey with one f Jeffrey" shouted over and over again?
SUBBACULTCHA *****
There has never been nor will there ever be a cooler song than Subbacultcha. It oozes brooding sexgods, clublike cruising and all-the-cool-bits-in-The-Matrix-like sensibilities. Total post-goth fantasy material "I was wearing eye-liner, she was wearing eye-liner, drug-running on this Panamanian Schooner". The god of all songs.
DISTANCE EQUALS RATE TIMES TIME **1/2
An odd little micro-song with a certain charm, but no real point.
LOVELY DAY ****
For once the bass line actually manages to spiral too far out of control, but the rhythm, lyric and sentiment manage to get that "I am an alien and I need to get off the planet really quickly to get to a party where the Martian equivalent of the B52s are playing" feeling. Like too many of the songs it ends just after it really starts to get going, but unlike D=RxT it doesn't suffer too adversely from it.
MOTORWAY TO ROSWELL *****
Black Francis' fascination with aliens comes most to the fore in this song about the Roswell crash. It sounds naff, but you get this image of our song-writer sitting in a camper-van in Roswell looking up at the stars feeling slightly poignant and identifying with a holidaying alien, who suffers a crash and ends up in army crates. It's a song that is allowed to play itself out. Great stuff.
THE NAVAJO KNOW ****
The Pixies have always had a bit of the David Lynch ethos growing within them - but this song's baseline is so reminiscent of that Julie Cruise song that came out at the same time as Twin Peaks that it can't be a coincidence. A good resolution to the album - it's not flashy but it's atmospheric.
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