Surfer Rosa

A very good alternative rock album, with excellent guitar work, bass playing and drums. Most of the songs are really well written and memorable for the most part. 'Where Is My Mind' is the most famous and deservedly so, but 'Bone Machine' 'Break My Body' and 'Gigantic' are all equally deserving of praise.

A strong debut album from the punky end of alternative rock. As with ‘Doolittle’, the influence this band had on the nascent grunge scene, especially Nirvana, is very clear from this album too. The distinctive lyrics and vocals are paired with some excellent guitar work in particular, plus really solid basslines and drums. The songs range from pretty fiery punk to some more gentle melodic poppy stuff, and there’s a fair amount of humour thrown in as well. ‘Where Is My Mind?’ is the obvious standout, and deservedly so, but there’s plenty more to enjoy here besides. Solid 4 stars.

C'est fou la ressemblance parfois avec du Nirvana (en même temps Kurt Cobain a dit s'être inspiré de cet album pour Nevermind) ! J'ai beaucoup aimé certaines chansons (''Where Is My Mind?" forcément, mais aussi "Brick is Red", "Bone Machine" ou "Break My Body") mais d'autres m'ont un peu perdu par leur côté brouillon, bien que ça soit voulu je sais. 3.5/5

Where is My Mind is one of my favorite songs, but I struggled with the rest of the album.

Upravo ću napisati jednu poglupu i veoma specifičnu uvredu za ovaj bend. Oni su kao ona najiritantnija osoba koju poznaješ koje se nikako ne možeš riješiti kroz život. Ali to sve zvukom.

When I put the cassette in my Beetle’s deck in 1988 I didn’t know music could sound like that. When I’d played the album, it was all I wanted music to sound like. I didn’t get all the references until years on, but it didn’t matter. Punk as fuck and catchy as hell, Pixies were the coolest thing ever, and I caught them just as I was starting college. No wonder it inevitably died in that tape deck - I played the life out of it. Then I bought another copy.

✅️ STILL BANGS HARD Fave tracks: Bone Machine Gigantic Where Is My Mind? Tony's Theme Vamos

I've missed that moment when screaming in microphone became a music. Two stars only for “Where is my mind”

I think this was the first Pixies album I listened to. I liked it quite a bit.

Beyond a classic; one of the best albums of the 1990s

Blind squirrel makes a great song every once in a while or something like that.

Good album. Been meaning to listen to more Pixies, obviously “Where Is My Mind” is awesome and I’d heard “Bone Machine” previously, that’s probably my favorite song here. The first half is way better than the second, all noisy and frantic. Black Francis’s vocals are AWESOME, the melodies are so crazy and unhinged (Bone Machine chorus, the repetition of “ride, ride, ride, ride” on “River Euphrates”), and just a lot of super off-kilter and interesting tunes. “Where Is My Mind?” Is the song that everyone talks about, and it deserves it. I don’t know for sure if it deserves ALL of it, but it’s certainly a great song. Driving vocals, frantic, desperate, surreal, great stuff. Sadly the rest of the album from there sucks, which is sad. “Tony’s Theme” is annoying, “Oh My Golly” is REALLY annoying… yeah. Just okay. This album is awesome, noisy, creative indie music that is worth checking out. Influential, momentous, awesome. 8.4/10 DOES IT BELONG ON THE LIST: YES REASON: INFLUENCE, QUALITY, RELEVANCE

Always have to remind myself where Surfer Rosa ends and Come On Pilgrim begins, as I grew up with the CD of them stuck together like some big, gorgeous amorphous blob. Yes indeed, I love this. Knowing at least all of their first incarnation back catalogue, choosing Surfer Rosa does somewhat betray 1001’s strategy. Perhaps it’s not the best album but it’s absolutely critical for modern alternative music. I believe that pre-Pixies there was nothing like them, which begs the question, short of some kind of spiritual intervention, how did this thing come into being? Quirky, raw yet incredibly accessible, so distinctive stylistically and perhaps over and above everything else, really good fun. Something Against You and Broken Face are my favourites, but of course you also have the immortal Gigantic and Where Is My Mind? I can never put my finger on what made early Pixies so wonderful… Frank Black was so weird, and his songwriting was so unusual, plus the interplay with Kim Deal was so playful yet so effective, and then you have the guitars… I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, so distinctive and different. Lastly… I don’t think you had to be there for Surfer Rosa, it’s pretty timeless for me. Interested to know what others unfamiliar with Pixies might think.

Some decent moments.

One of the first “cool” albums I was super into. Incredibly aggressive, which I always forget, because its also so catchy and smart. One of my personal favorites, and not even their best

Good! That one great hit… overall good album.

It's raw and barebones. Pixies sure do love their body parts (3.5)

This is the first album released by Pixies in 1988. I describe it as quirky pop post punk rock with surf, ska rockabilly and other elements... including Spanish lyrics. Black Francis (guitar) and Kim Deal (bass) sing and Joey Santiago plays lead guitar. It was clearly an influence on grunge and Nirvana in particular. The Pixies is a band I've always been aware of from songs on the radio but never thought much of one way or the other. Man! I totally missed them but am glad this project got me to listen to them now. They're great! They're quirky and rock! I really like the whole album after listening a few times but top songs for me are: Bone Machine Break My Body Broken Face Gigantic River Euphrates Where is Mind? Cactus Tony's Theme Vamos

Maybe I'm creepy but I liked the album cover more than the music.

Where is my mind is literally the only good song here. I did not enjoy anything else at all, but there are bits and pieces of each song that I find interesting so it's good that better bands like Nirvana took inspiration from those and turned them into memorable songs. 1.5/5

One of the great bands of indie rock and what a debut, dynamic, fully immature and completely interesting at all times. Melodic and rocking and intense. With Deal as a secret weapon. Yep, yep yep yep

de início me pareceu só um som qualquer com vocais irritantes, mas foi despiorando um pouco. conhecia apenas o hit "where's my mind" e acho que gostaria de ter permanecido assim.

só conhecia 2 músicas desse, gostei muito. dá pra ver que influenciou muita coisa que veio depois.

Not for me. 1/5

Indie Rock/Alternative Rock Favorite Songs: Where Is My Mind? Least Favorite Song: *Did Not Record* I uh…kinda hate to say this, but I wasn’t the biggest fan of the production and the vocals in this one. I’m kinda more of a fan of their second album Doolittle where the production just seemed more polished. This recording just seemed a little rough to me, not gonna lie. Other than that, though, the album’s good enough. I might end up relistening to this in the future, but I just couldn’t really get past this album at some point. 7/10

This was a decent punk rick album. Lyrically minimalistic and musically repetitive.

*Surfer Rosa* is an attempt to answer the question: what do you do when you figure out you're a freak? These weird little songs - most hovering around the two-minute mark if not below it - are a catalogue of perversity: handsy priests, tales of incest, voyeuristic thrills, interludes about teachers who vanish in a cloud of rumor. They teem with musical ideas that don't fit; the coda of "Break My Body" feels like the start of another song that goes nowhere, while "Cactus" starts out with the famous major-sixth blues riff employed by T. Rex among others but gradually loses sight of it in the minor-key storm. It would seemingly be easy for all this to add up to just another art-punk curiosity, albeit a tuneful one. But there's more here, in the form of the vulnerability Black Francis shows on this record. In contrast to plenty of other alt acts, he writes mostly in the first person; the confusion and anger in "Bone Machine" works because he's the one getting cuckolded, for example. Likewise, his digressions into one-semester-abroad Spanish come off as sincere because he's openly using them to protect himself - from his feelings about the girl he left behind (or who left him), from the ridicule of everyone back home. Kim Deal's "Gigantic" fits right in here; it's unabashedly both horny and ecstatic, a celebration of a girl getting exactly what she asked for. Still, this wouldn't work if the sound and the tunes weren't amazing - and they are. There's a reason "Where Is My Mind?" has become a cultural touchstone - it's the perfect distillation of what it feels like to wake up disoriented and promptly decide to dive back into unreality. And Steve Albini's production has been justly imitated for decades. It occurs to me I can't fully explain what it is about this that I love so much. Hopefully that doesn't make me too much of a freak.

8.5

Really only liked 1 song :/

A bit heavy for me, but still a decent album

Wasn’t expecting to like this much but it started out surprisingly better than I thought. Short, tight sharp songs -at least for the first 4 or 5. But then it got needlessly shouty, and by ‘Tony’s Theme’ I’d had enough. Stuck with it to the end only because it was a short album, but they were needing to redeem themselves in the second half, which they didn’t.

My first time listening to Pixies and I immediately felt at home. It's gonna take a few more listens to get into it properly and I expect I'll end up liking it more.

Very interesting music. I actually did recognize one of the songs. Other than that wouldn’t listen to again

Where is my mind brings it up to a 4, would've been a 3 otherwise

no era mi estilo no me gusto sorry… le pondria 2.5 tbh

Прикольно, мне нравится, что я познактмилась с Pixies, они очень классные ребята, много крутых песен хотя некоторые мне не очень зашли

not for me

I like the Pixies but had never listened to this album all through. It's great and I'm an idiot....

Lots of noise at times, but also somehow fits a surfer vibe. I think the album drops and then picks back up in quality Some rammers in there as well 4/5

1 number I like

So good

A great album by a great band

I like this but never quite as much as everyone else seems to.

I knew the big songs off this but for some reason had never listened to it in full (Doolittle being the Pixies album I know best). Great stuff though.

Ohhhhhhh….what a treat on a Monday morning!!!!!! 5 stars and a vinyl day❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ One of the all time great LPs, Kim Deal sounding as brilliant as ever. “Gigantic”, “River Euphrates” and “Where is My Mind” is a run of 3 songs rarely bettered on any album. Super stuff. Tom.

Really enjoyed this. Very pleasantly chaotic. Nice stuff.

Pixies is a very peculiar band to me. It does everything I like, being energetic, chaotic, silly, noisy, catchy and fun between other adjectives, but I've never found them specially exciting. I listened to this record five times, and for each one I ended up feeling slightly different. In some occasions, nothing really interested me and others I had my head banging and moving to the energy. One of these instances was the last one, and I'm writing the review based on that alone. To expand on the descriptors of the beginning, this album checks all of them. The lyrics are almost nonsensical and ridiculous, and the fact that they sometimes switch to Spanish just adds up to the sense of silliness and fun. The guitars are incredibly distorted, playing either very fast, tense and chaotic (like in "Something Against You" or "Broken Face") or very melodic (like in "River Euphrates" and "Where Is My Mind?"), but most commonly playing riffs in a middle ranged tempo that tend to add some energy without getting as frantic as the examples given, yet sometimes not being very intriguing, such as in "Cactus", a song that doesn't go anywhere exciting. As for the drums, they are loud and always being a great company to the guitars, being blood pumping in the faster cuts, more relaxed in the slower ones and mostly staying in mid-tempo. The only thing left to mention are the vocals (sorry, couldn't come up with anything interesting to say about the bass except for having some groovy lines in "Bone Machine" and "Vamos"). It has being a long time since I heard a Pixies' album, so I don't remember if Kim Deal's singing had that much presence in other releases as it does in this one. The combination of female and male voices is always nice, specially considering the big contrast between the girl's soft voice and the outlandish and high-pitched vocals of Frank Black, which as a result creates a great dynamic between the two. When deciding what score to give, I finally decided to go for a higher number, as it is undoubtedly a very unique and fun experience. I do wish some of the tracks impacted me as much as the more frenetic cuts. Nonetheless, still very enjoyable, and I hope for it to grow on me so I can start appreciate more their other works.

90s music is the best

I got nothing against this album!

I thought I liked pixies but most of this album is grating and kinda cringey. I’d call it a GIGANTIC piece of shit

Too edgy

From the opener Bone Machine through Broken Face, Gigantic and of course Where Is My Mind, this album thunders along, 13 songs in little over half an hour. Great band starting out on their album with a bang. Still sounds fresh all these years later.

YIPPEEEEEE

Classic stuff by the Pixies 4/5

Today's a good day. Never listened to Surfer Rosa before, but always intended to. Since starting the 1001, was holding off until I got it on the generator. And damn is this a good record. It's a little more noisy and raw compared to Doolittle, which is nice. Also really appreciating Kim Deal having a more up front and center focus on her vocals on this album compared to Doolittle. I don't remember having this complaint on Doolittle, but some of the songs could have been a little longer for me, but it's not a huge complaint. Either way, fantastic album, and getting full marks.

Not their strongest offer and honestly it’s just ok. I like the semi experimental vibe but it’s doesn’t come together well and feels clunky. 3/5

Great gnarly grungy rock.

good album, interfludes were a bit much

Not sure why I didn't love this, as I love the Pixies... but I didn't. Felt clunky.

So many of the bands I love mention the pixies as an influence. I was just young enough when this album came out that it never really entered my disc rotation and my local college radio leaned heavily towards hip-hop in the 80s and 90s. 5 stars no skips, will listen to again.

Give 1000 MCM majors a guitar and they will eventually record the entire works of Surfer Rosa by the Pixies

like, okay i guess

Okay album

A huge blind-spot in my listening library, it's hard to believe I missed this as a Gen-Xer from the Grunge era. It's kinda weird but still rocks and has a raw indie-garage band quality that I dug. It'll be in my regular rotation.

Surfer Rosa was a very enjoyable album. I did read on this album's Wikipedia page that it played a huge role in inspiring Nirvana's Nevermind and after hearing it, I can definitely see how it did. If i can think of one problem this album has, it's that the vocals here are very poorly mixed and are quite difficult to hear. However, the other aspects of the album are all pretty darn good. The grunge vibe that this album has going on is still fun to listen to and the album cuts a very good pace and none of the songs were bad to listen to. It's still not beating Bossanova when it comes to Pixies albums but this is still a really good one. Best Song: Where Is My Mind? Worst Song: I'm Amazed Side note: Last Pixies album, meaning: 1. Bossanova 2. Surfer Rosa 3. Doolittle

A decent album from the 80's!? This should help my overall stats. Songs like Where Is My Mind that have been "overdone" eventually where thin on me. But somehow this one has never rubbed me wrong, or maybe I've just lost my damn mind. I'm sure with more exposure I would be rating this a 5, but it's a a 4 for now.

5/10 No es malo, pero bastante pj. Raro en algunos momentos, no termino de gustar

Where is My Mind is such a classic song. The rest of the album isn't bad either.

Great album. This is metal before it became weird and scary. I can see the influences on nirvana for sure

I’ll preface this by saying Where Is My Mind? is a top tier song. I know they were going to for the underproduced thing, but it got a little too messy for me at some points. And the lyrics? I can completely appreciate the innovation and influence from this album and I’m guessing that I would enjoy later albums by the Pixies more because I love the punk/grunge/alternative sound.

3+ nice

Adore this one. I bought this one back in high school in my poser era, didn’t ever listen to it but claimed I loved it. Luckily later in life Liam convinced me to give it the listen it deserves. I’m not sure it’s better than Doolittle but it does have where is my mind so it probably wins. Just gas all around, so good. Loud soft loud baby: the masterclass in dynamic writing.

Wasn’t really a fan tbh, I enjoyed songs like bone machine, break my body, gigantic, where is my mind and cactus but the rest were just like kinda bad

more of a 3.5 but i'll round up because i'm nice

‘Where is my mind’ really carried the album. Much bigger fan of the Doolittle album

Seen live. Excellent album

Really more of a 1 but the music almost rescues it from the vocals from time to time.

The riff in Where is my Mind? is genius, but this is middling punk otherwise.

Favorite producer, cool album

😃

Overall good, although "Where Is My Mind" is tired from carrying this album.

it is so funny to me just how many musicians experience the "this album sucks on release, oh just kidding this is wildly influential" phenomenon and i'm beginning to think it's a criterion for inclusion in the book this website is based on.... at least for some albums anyway, this is fine. i like the energy more than i like anything else individually. obviously "Where Is My Mind?" is a standout, and predictably, my introduction to that song, like so many others, was Fight Club, which i didn't see until my senior year of HS, so i was late to the Pixies party, as it were still, for me, the album doesn't have much staying power. i think it is very cool, and some of these are fun jams, but i don't like it enough to justify a higher score

i never really gave Pixies a chance before. this was fun, but please i share my screen a lot at work and just about blasted this album cover in a meeting.

3.5-4

predicting a Brandon 4 and a nuanced 3 from Dane

This is the second of 3 Pixies albums I’ve rolled for this project, following Bossanova, which I gave a 4 star review. Surfer Rosa is the first album by the Pixies, and it’s still really good, I just don’t think it grabbed me as much as Bossanova did as a whole. It does some weird, experimental things that I just didn’t love in some of the songs, like the lead singer just screaming and making weird noises. The guitar playing as a whole on all of these songs is quite good, and the album is the perfect length at 33 minutes long, with 13 songs, most of which are a little forgettable but still different enough that you’ll have a good time listening to them. Also on this album, is “Where Is My Mind?”, which is their best song from their entire discography, bar none. It’s one of those songs that just manages to somehow be in all of my favorite things, and I’ll always be happy listening to it. It’s likely to be the only song I recognize from the Pixies off rip, and for those reasons, it’s by far my favorite song on the album. It’s not enough to raise it to a 4, but it’s a phenomenal song that would make it very far in a head to head matchup with my other favorite songs. As far as debut albums go, this is quite good. The guitar playing is the signature noise here. It’s trippy, and surfer-rocky, but not quite as much as their later albums. It just didn’t hit me as hard as a whole for some reason, and I listened to it probably 30+ times. I don’t know, maybe it is a 4. I don’t have a lot of criticisms for this album. Let me listen to it one more time, because I really want to give this one a 4 as well. Update. Can’t do it. Most of these songs just don’t do it for me enough, but they’re still pretty good as a whole. It’s a 3.9 out of 5. I have one more Pixies album to listen to now, and it’s the highest rated on the site, so that’s exciting. Perhaps I can have a 3, 4 and 5 star rated album for this band. Until then, I’m going to compare this to Bossanova and try to justify a 3 vs a 4. I could come back and change this to a 4 later. I don’t know if I’m quite done with this one yet.

They went one better with debaser but this is still very unique and influential

Doolittle more consistently good but some incredible singles on this

It surprised me how little I liked this album. I’m a big fan of Where Is My Mind? as a standout track but the rest of the record wasn’t doing it for me. Tonally it’s decent, but the vocals and song-writing felt jarring at points and left me feeling very flat about what I was listening to. 5/10.

Overall mid, some great songs, some very bad songs. Or at least that i didn’t enjoy

Such a great album, love at first listen.

Standard, quite unmemorable, indie fayre. I'm sure I've reviewed a Pixies album before and lo and behold when I look through my history I see this is the third Pixies album I've listened to. And strangely enough I made similar comments for each of the others. Nothing special. Forgettable. So maybe it's me? Or maybe it's them!

Highlights: Gigantic, Where is my Mind?. 2.8

good album. interesting vibe. strong 8 to a light 9. first listen tracklist ranking: 1. Where Is My Mind? 2. Gigantic 3. Bone Machine 4. Break My Body 5. Cactus 6. Brick is Red 7. Broken Face 8. Something Against You 9. I’m Amazed 10. Oh My Golly! 11. Tony’s Theme 12. River Euphrates

This blew my mind when it came out. Pixies came out of nowhere with a new brash angular sound, which I loved.

One of the best indie albums of all time. The manic energy here is unmatched. There's some surf influence, there seems to be some broadly Southwestern US influence. And Pixies managed to slip some *real* catchy songs on here, even though they have some *raw* performance. Even the weird little candid spoken word things add to the atmosphere here. I wish I had the time today to say a little more about this, because it really is fantastic but this will have to do for now.

Грязная музыка, но что-то в этом есть

This album ended the 80s. Drums sounded like drums again. The jangly acoustic guitars decided they'd be fine sitting at the freaks' table with the screeching and squealing electrics. They play Latin-flavored surf rock, garage punk, and Tres Hombres-era ZZ Top. Their vocalist, who by all appearances is a 12-year-old boy on a dirtbike, is either Satan or the prophet Ezekiel but he's definitely going to seduce both you and your mother. There's the girl next door, but you have to suspect her by association and acknowledge the possibility that she may be pulling all the strings. Their songs are a desert wasteland of the Old Testament, or Sonora, or the desert shores of Puerto Rico, and it's a surreal horrorshow of incest and bleached and broken bones in the sand. With a happy ending. It's better than Doolittle. Also, since I'm feeling belligerent, "Where Is My Mind" is mid-tier on this album, it's just the one everyone knows from movies and teevee.

Always have to remind myself where Surfer Rosa ends and Come On Pilgrim begins, as I grew up with the CD of them stuck together like some big, gorgeous amorphous blob. Yes indeed, I love this. Knowing at least all of their first incarnation back catalogue, choosing Surfer Rosa does somewhat betray 1001’s strategy. Perhaps it’s not the best album but it’s absolutely critical for modern alternative music. I believe that pre-Pixies there was nothing like them, which begs the question, short of some kind of spiritual intervention, how did this thing come into being? Quirky, raw yet incredibly accessible, so distinctive stylistically and perhaps over and above everything else, really good fun. Something Against You and Broken Face are my favourites, but of course you also have the immortal Gigantic and Where Is My Mind? I can never put my finger on what made early Pixies so wonderful… Frank Black was so weird, and his songwriting was so unusual, plus the interplay with Kim Deal was so playful yet so effective, and then you have the guitars… I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, so distinctive and different. Lastly… I don’t think you had to be there for Surfer Rosa, it’s pretty timeless for me. Interested to know what others unfamiliar with Pixies might think.

yes by all means scream into my ears while electric guitar goes full tilt you know how that thrills me