Like Please Please Me,
The Velvet Underground & Nico,
and Nevermind (which wouldn’t exist
without it), Doolittle is an album
that launched a thousand bands. It still sounds as disturbing, catchy, crazy,
and uniformly perfect as it did 25 years ago—much less a product of its time
than those other albums in its influential league. There is nothing indicative
of the antiseptic sounds of ’89 in Gil Norton’s raw, organic production, though
its original CD release was still in need of a sonic upgrade. Doolittle apparently got that when it
and the rest of The Pixies’ catalogue was remastered in 2003. I don’t have that
version, so I can’t confirm whether or not 4AD’s new triple-disc deluxe edition
is an all-new master or a recycle of the 2003 one (and since nothing in the
press material indicates a remaster, I think it might be safe to assume the
latter). However, this is still a pretty must-own repurchase of an album that
should have already been in your collection for twenty-something years.
Like all really necessary deluxe-edition excesses, Doolittle 25 offers ways to hear some
familiar music in fresh and enlightening ways. While the original album
occupies disc one, its demos on disc three strip away Norton’s barely-there
sheen for an even rawer, even wilder Doolittle;
not necessary a better version of an LP I already called perfect (and it can’t
be said enough: Doolittle is perfect.
It’s perfect), but a good idea of how it would sound on stage. Genuine live
recordings can be heard on disc two in the form of a snatch of John Peel
sessions that reinterpret some of the material faster, nastier. That second
disc also includes all related B-sides, (many also in Peel performances) which
are the best original B-sides of The Pixies’ career: “Manta Ray”, “Weird at My
School”, “Wave of Mutilation UK Surf”, “Into the White”, and “Dancing the Manta
Ray” (though I should note that “Bailey’s Walk” is probably their worst
B-side). That these tracks are significantly meatier here than they were on
2001’s anemic sounding Complete B-sides
CD leaves no wonder that at least they were remastered for Doolittle 25.
