Trompe Le Monde
Pixies
Elektra,
1991
Reviewed by
Troy Carpenter
The Pixies' final album is an emphatic musical statement - the hugely influential
alternative band exited the music scene in almost the same way it entered - loud, weird,
primitive and beautiful.
The four-piece band released one album per year after a neutron bomb of a debut
full-length, Surfer Rosa, in 1988. By 1990's Bossanova, they had
discovered how to encapsulate their initially raw music in a sheen of clear production.
While Trompe Le Monde ventures even further in this direction, it is also the
Pixies' quirkiest and most racuous record, dissonant (but clean) guitars clashing against
pristine, jumpy bass lines and hectic drums, with Black Francis' famous screams getting
louder all the time.
You can tell from the opening song that the band is getting more creative with age - a
shimmering backdrop of furry guitars support Francis, musing over abstract poetry on a
girl's tee-shirt ("'Why do cupids and angels continually haunt her dreams like
memories of another life?' / is painted on her shirt in capitals"), with so much fury
you'd think he was giving invaluable life advice - and he probably is.
This powerful mood is sustained well into the album. The songs stop on a dime, only for
another to pick up the beat and jettison the sound back into the blue sky.
Francis' lyrics creatively explore topics such as wandering aliens picking up Earth's
transmission signals, the lifestyles of underappreciated revolutionary architects, and the
aesthetics of dinosaur extinction - that's just in the first four songs. Even filler
becomes an artistic excercise: "Space (I Believe In)" starts by lamenting the
trials of the recording process ("We needed something to move and fill up the space /
we needed something this always is just the case") but moves into such an inspiring
Joey Santiago guitar solo, the listener is left wondering how the band could actually
consider this a fill-up track. Then, here's Francis in the bridge, announcing "Now,
I'm gonna sing the 'Perry Mason' theme" and doing just that. Why wouldn't ya?
Trompe Le Monde means "Trick The World" in French - perhaps the trick
was releasing an album with such vitality and intensity as the band was on its last legs.
Francis would disband the Pixies by way of a press release a year later, as the
"alternative revolution" was in full swing. But this was no half-hearted parting
shot - the Pixies remained innovative and essential throughout their short but sweet
career.
