Customer Reviews

Bossanova

5 star:		(61)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I, like many other young'uns, was introduced to the Pixies by the name-dropping habits of bands like Nirvana. After buying Doolittle, and scarfing up the rest of their releases, the rest of my CD collection has basically been rendered average. At first listen, Bossanova sounded rather dull compared to "Debaser," "Here Comes Your Man," and other perfect pop tunes off of Doolittle. But like any great album, it slowly but surely grows on you. Every listen will reveal a new quirk. "Cecilia Ann" gets things rocking majestically but of course with a surfer's touch. "Rock Music" has become my favorite song with indecipherable lyrics. Black Francis' scream is truly an instrument as much as the guitar or bass. "Velouria" has a guitar riff and melody that seem odd at first listen but totally make sense and seem like perfection later. This entire album is chock full of great melodies and harmonies. The fastest song on the album, "Allison," also seems to be a love song of sorts, or at least infatuation, featuring the simple yet effective lyric, "and when the planet hit the sun, I saw the face of Allison." "Ana" is a great acoustic song with an overall eerie vibe. Same for "Havalina," which closes out the album with a bit of calm after the chaotically fun "Stormy Weather," which I like to think of as a sing-a-long for the end of the world. Then there are the epic tracks "All Over The World" and "The Happening," which are great examples of lengthy songs that can keep a listener riveted through their entire playlength. The latter of the songs also features Black Francis' trademark lyrics dealing with outer space and its inhabitants. The album as a whole features wonderfully obscure lyrics that will leave you scratching your head, smiling, thinking, or possibly all of the above if you're moderately demented. I cannot stress how great this album is!

My favorite band throughout all of high school broke up when i was in 9th grade. It's ok though, cuz I dropped out before completing 10th. This is they: The Pixies.

Ecce Pixies. The first time I heard this (I had bought it earlier that day, in the cheap bin at the Aiken mall on cassette) I listened to it the whole thing, over and over, on the long greyhound ride from SC to WV, going home for Thanksgiving break, 1992... I was one week shy of 14.

It's odd- Come on Pilgrim and Surfer Rosa are both visceral angry, snarling little albums- you can hear the progression, but they both sound similar. Same for Doolittle and Trompe le Monde- both are poppy, punky, surrealistic little goldmines with songs about topics as diverse as Roswell, Samson being blind and pulling down the temple pillars (Gouge Away), how we bringing the apocalypse down on or heads, love and gun-running on a panamanian schooner...

BUT. Bossanove sounds like nothing else The Pixies ever did. And that's why it's my fave (She's my fave, undressing in the sun...). It's an ethereal, black-as-night, grim but gorgeous album full of reckless punk screaming and the rambling lyrics of Black Francis, Ms. Deal's badass bassery, Dave's fine drumming and the ever-inimitable Mr. santiago's piercing guitar lines. This is the album that made me want to learn surf guitar (before all you cheap copsters with your pulp fiction soundtracks crashed the gates, he he).

Velouria, The Happening, Ana (my favorite song by them- a gentle and soft spanish masterpiece that stands out utterly in their corpus, sounds like waves breaking on blue sand at sunset), Cecilia Anne, Allison... This is an album that you can put on and enjoy. Oh, and it works really well if you put it on while waatching Disney's 'Alice in Wonderland,' indulge in some minor league organic substance abuse, turn the tv volume down and- ENJOY.

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.

The first Pixies song I'd ever heard was "Where is My Mind?". At the time, I didn't think it was a *great* song, but nonetheless it was different and interesting enough to make me curious. A few years later I'd heard "Monkey Gone to Heaven" and "Here Comes Your Man" and I was hooked.

Doolittle was my first Pixies album, and it is great. But Bossanova is my favorite. To call Bossanova a perfect rock album would not be inaccurate. While not as well rounded as Doolittle, it is still a beautiful, powerful disc.

I still remember hearing it for the first time. I popped it in my CD player and was just blown away by "Cecilia Ann", a Surftones cover. DAMN! "Rock Music" followed, and even though I could not tell for the life of me what he was saying, I found myself screaming along to the lyrics anyway.

And then there was "Velouria". This is one of my favorite Pixies songs of all time. Weezer recently did a cover of this, but the original is still better. It's charged with this... ENERGY and EMOTION!

I have not the space here to describe the rest of the tracks on here, so I'll just pick my very favorites. "Allison" is short, but very catchy and with great lyrics. The cleverly titled "Ana" is mellow and smooth, and a true surf song (Hey- look at the lyrics sheet. The first letter of each line spells SURFER). "The Happening" is a wierd song but it has a great beat and what is more or less a Shakespearean sonnet at the end. It's also about Aliens :) "Stormy Weather" is a song that you WILL NOT be able to resist singing along with. And then, of course, "Blown Away". MY GOD, that is a great song. I love the lyrics.

THE BOTTOM LINE: If you have ever enjoyed a single Pixies song, or just love exceptional rock music, then you owe it to yourself to buy this album. The music on this CD is DRIVEN. You can FEEL the power an emotion behind every track. The lyrics are not your standard fare either, but are raw and beautiful, like poetry. Best of all, the Pixies know how to play their damn instruments! VERY WELL. They know how to achieve a powerful and driven sound without just hammering out power chords. The beat is charged. But there is something else that makes me love the pixies. They can somehow wrap the music around and let it carry you away, let you scream and dance and just lose yourself in the sound, and by the time it lets you go you just feel good. This album does that unassumingly from the first track and makes no apologies.

Buy this disc. Now.

I've been a fan of Pixies and Frank Black-related material for years, but haven't made many reviews. Anyway, this is by far my favorite of all theri albums. It combines their raw punkish energy with their capacity for beautiful melodies perfectly, to me it's their masterwork. Here's a song by song little synopse..

"Cecilia Ann": Great straitforward LA punk instrumental. This little irresistible even made an apeearance on the film Kicking And Screaming.

"Rock Music": One of the most dissonant and wild songs they ever did, the lyrics probably aren't their best (hard to hear) but the song works period.

"Velouria": Lovely. Along with "Ana" and "Havalina", the thoroughly most beautiful song on the album. A little romaunt dedicated to an otherworldly love who tries to hop on a trampoline out of this world...every summer, every summer...AND HOW DOES LEMUR SKIN REFLECT THE SEA? You'll find that Frank has alot of alien lovers in his songs.

"Alison": A quick punk ditty about jazz musician something Alison. Can't rember the first name, but that's who it's for.

"Is She Weird": One of my favorite all time Pixies songs, and a fave of many of my friends as well. It's catchy, bizarre, and intriguing and the chorus is absolutely ghoulish. It won't dissapoint you.

"Ana": Small but transcendant. Pure bossanova surf music, it reflects Frank's continuing interest in that style of music. Ride a wave, ride a wave...

"All Over The World": One of the longer epics, along with "The Happening". It spends the first half in a regular stanza, which is great by the way, then on the second half is largely instrumental improv while Frank speaks some cluttered logic: "Time is an arrangement. Time is an arranger. I am a derangement".

"Dig For Fire": One of their most radio friendly (along with "Here Comes Your Man" if you can believe that), a light hearted Talking Heads-esque romp about platypi and digging for hell.

"Down To The Well": Hardcore. I can hardly wait til we go down to the well either, and "What matter does it make if they'll be favorite songs playing in my head?"

"The Happening": THe second epic. A cooly done number that starts out with Frank screaming about Area 51, than the last half has him narrating a tale of messianic arrival.

"Blown Away": Speedy, cosmic vibrations from deep into space. This one flows into...

"Hangwire": Dark yet comedic. "Every morning of every day/I'll bossanova with ya!"

"Stormy Weather": "It is time for stormy weather/It is..." He repeats this endlessly. Creates the imagery nicely.

"Havalina": The perfect ending song. The poetry is scarce, but combined with the breathtaking arrangements, it makes you feel like you are really in Arizona running with an invisible love lost to the ages.

.././..what more can I say? You can't go wrong with this album...

"Bossanova" is a tour de force masterpiece from one of rock's most revolutionary bands. An album full of chaos, fun, surfing and otherworldly imagery, "Bossanova" takes the listener to worlds that exist only in Black Francis' twisted head. From the opening chord on the surf instrumental "Cecilia Ann" to the beautiful conclusion "Havelina," "Bosanova is a perfect rock album. "Rock Music" shows what rock really is, indecipherable nonsensical screaming. "My Velouria" is a beautifully written song (it could be about the ecstasy of love, or the ecstasy of drugs, you decide). "Alision" is power punk pop at it's finest. "And when the planet hit the sun, I saw the face of Alison" capture the moment of love(or lust) at first sight. "Dig For Fire" is another melodic sing-a-long pop song.

My favorite 3 tracks on the album however, are "The Happening," "Blown Away," and "All Over the World." Listening to "All Over the World" takes you everywhere and nowhere at the same time. It combines the trippy journeys to the moon and back etc., with an ending cadence of defiance against the rules and morals of modern society. "Blown Away" shows how idiotic we all are when it comes down to women, "I didn't get so far, my words got blown away."

The climax of the album occurs on "The Happening," a song about Las Vegas, aliens, and Shakespere (the last part of the song is written in Shakesperean sonnet form....cool!). The screaming about aliens landing in Caesar's Palace is interrupted twice in the song by the beautiful melody of Francis' vocals and Santiago's guitar. The last half of the song is nothing short of brilliant. You'll have to listen for yourself to get the full effect.

The Pixies' "Bossanova" is one of my favorite albums. It takes you all over the place with it's trippy songs about love, rock, confusion, and aliens. A bizarre album, yet beautiful at the same time. One of the best albums of the 90's. A+

This album takes you on ups and downs like you wouldn't believe... my boyfriend and I scream at eachother during "Rock Music" in my dorm room and we enjoy ourselves so very much. I got this album at a garage sale for around 50cents at some old ladies house... in the midst of wool sweaters and gaudy lamps from the fifties this gem shined through sitting under a pile of romance novels. To this day I have no idea why this lady of around 80 had a Pixies album in the first place. I am horrible about getting albums if I have them on cassette even though the quality is so much better and the fact that it is just so much more accessible to use... so thank goodness the old lady had this cd.

The Pixies have been a constant part of my life, they contribute just as much as every other artist because they have been around for such a long time on my shelf. As another sister-inspired music addition this one was added into my collection during my middle school years. I tried my hardest to get my very few friends into the Pixies in middle school, but they just didn't understand. We were all the out-casts but I guess we all had our own little groove to fit into. Audrey was obsessed with George in the Beatles and she made us listen to Sgt. Pepper's at any moment possible. At the time I couldn't understand why anyone would chose to listen to something that my father raved about, but I let her do her thing. Then there was Megan and she was into Aerosmith religously, and sadly enought I took part in this little fad of ours. And then I sat there at our table of four or five girls, short and small with an awkward face raving about the Pixies and no one listened.

So I sat in my bedroom alone, surrounded by stuffed animals of my childhood and nail polish bottles of my preteen days, listening to "Velouria" by myself. Humming along, singing along with the lyrics book propped under my drying toenailed toes. No one understood why I liked this band... "You can't understand what the guy is saying" "This is weird" or my favorite, coming from my little sister, "So does like the Chess Club listen to this stuff?" She was a little brat as far as I was concerned, but I laughed at that one... mainly because it was just an off-the-wall statement to say.

So then I went through my days at my suburban high school finding out there were others that liked the Pixies to the extent that I did... they just didn't live around me. The dead-beats that hung out at the punk rock venue I went to... now they liked the Pixies and they knew all the lyrics to "Is She Weird" just like me... and in between sets we used to listen to the Pixies.. especially Bossanova.

Bossanova is my favorite because I can tolerate it the most, I love all of the songs and for some reason their are certain elements of Doolittle that are bothersome. So I danced around in between sets with John shrugging up and down my shoulders and sang staring up at the ceiling as Frank Black sang "Your mouth is everywhere. I'm lying in it. Is she weird, is she over me like the stars and the sun?" Ah the memories.

Then I went off to college, lugged my box of a couple hundred cds and started stacking them on the built-in shelves in the room. My roommate was caught later that evening browsing the titles with an awkward look on her eye; as I made my way back to unpacking she apologized and quickly left the room. I glanced over the spines of my cds, too, trying to see what would cause anyone to leave the room... and I was clueless. She explained to me, after we had gotten to know eachother, that she knew none of the artists that were printed on the sides of my cds and she was a bit disturbed. Not everyone was like my roommate, though, there were others like the kids at the punk shows that I so regularly attended in high school. Others that had extensive no-name band music collections... and others that loved the dreamy vocals of the Pixies (or the screaming cries of other songs).

And then I met Zach, and we used to dance around in my dimly-lit room screaming lyrics along to the Pixies... and that is when that album was truly christened. I will forever remember Bossonova as music that let us unwind at the end of the week... music that made me so very happy.

(And just about every mixed tape I make has a song from Bossanova on it

The Pixies have the unusual distinction of having a small catalogue (4 albums/1 ep) all of which are minor masterpieces (yes, even Trompe le Monde). Two of their albums, Doolittle and Surfa Rosa are iconic classics, but this album is my dark favourite and I think a lot of Pixies fans will feel particularly attached to this record. It's the first album by the band that feels very produced, shedding the raw, almost improvised slack of Surfa Rosa and Come on Pilgrim. But the album rides a fascinating line between being contained by it's production and pushing the emotion and force of the music to it's limits. This is their pop album if you like, but it's dark pop. I like it because it demonstrates to other contemporary bands (very few can match it with the talent and bravado of the Pixies) just how stellar tunes on a pop album can be whilst pushing the range of emotion beyond the feigned cliches of the 'indie' scene. Check out the irresistable driving 'Dig for Fire', the beautiful, haunting 'Ana', the darkly punk 'Is she Weird' and the sardonic, playful 'All Over the World'. The tracks keep the classic Pixie format of 2 minute power pop compositions. There are no excess notes and no self indulgent rock posturing, just hardcore, imaginitive, guitar driven tunes, cranked out for the love of music, not for the love of themselves. When you hear them at their best, the Pixies definitely have some claim to being the most influential and consistently brilliant band of the past 20 years. Bossa Nova maintains the standard, and is essential to your Pixies collection.

This album is superlative. One of the best. Ever. It's years later and I still get a kick out of it, which is more than most of the albums I bought around that time. Not that there's anything wrong with Trompe Le Monde, but Bossanova is what introduced me to the Pixies, and I still love it and them. I tried to categorize The Pixies to a Swedish tourist we have staying with us at the moment. The best I could come up with was "alternative punk rock latino pop" The songs on Bossanova range from grunge to smooth, and show an amazing ability for mixing rhthym, melody and harmony into a cohesive whole which aren't matched by any band I've encountered since. Buy this album!

This album is their least 'raw' album.The singing is smoother, though still the trade-mark neurotic traits of Black Francis' expression.There is even some semi-ethereal approach to it.But there is only so ethereal that the Pixies get.It's still full of the one-of-a-kind emotional angles to the lyrics.Nobody else would say those things the way 'Blacky' does (as if I'm on nick-name basis with him).
The melodies are great.Theres always a reverb sound of one sort or another in the songs.So it sounds like they were in outer-space when they dreamt this music.The cover is a good reflection of their approach to this album.One cute piece of Pixies humour is that amongst all these smooth songs (by their standards I mean), Mr.Francis failed(chose to fail) to resist the temptation to pop in a certifyable !VOICE THRASHING!(at track 2).
This album is different in purpose than their thrashier ones, but certainly equal in quality.Quite 'beautiful' actually.(My favourite, for now.)