This is a song about a superhero named Tony!

I've been listening to a lot of proper music with words lately, instead of bands with names like Starving Weirdos that produce hours of psychedelic lyric-less drone. Not because I've suddenly gone off all that nonsense, you understand, just because I feel like a change now.

My favourite, um, rediscovery has been the Pixies. I forgot how fucking good they actually were. They also got me thinking about a couple of things.

Firstly - and I realise that this is relative - the received wisdom on the quality of Pixies studio albums is:

Surfer Rosa
Doolittle
Bossanova
Trompe le Monde

You know what? While Surfer Rosa is by far my favourite (I like the rawness of the production - pretentious sod though he may be, Steve Albini gets a lot of stuff right, his own bands Big Black and Shellac were also pretty goddamn good) I actually listen to and enjoy Trompe le Monde far more than the other two albums.

Second, it got me thinking about how music is consumed. Mp3 and media players do release one from the tyranny of the album. However, I can't help feeling that when people say that they don't like albums "because there are only 2 or 3 good songs" that this is because (a) they will insist on listening to crap music and (b) there may be an element that they aren't giving the supposed "filler" a chance. Though I like Surfer Rosa and Trompe le Monde more, there are actually very few (if any) songs on those 4 albums that I could describe as bad. Pixies were excellent, but there are plenty of bands that used to make (and plenty that still do) superb albums.

Third, I realise that the 45 minute long player came about purely because 2 sides of a 33 1/3 rpm record would take around 22 minutes of music a side and, latterly, CD albums would stretch to 70 minutes, purely because the space was there (apparently that length because the CEO of Philips had a particular Beethoven recording that was around that size...quite possibly utter cobblers that story, but there you go). That wasn't always a great time of albums of popular music - whilst Spiritualized's best album was a 70 minute beast (helped get me into a lot of other stuff, too) you'd have the likes of Metallica producing bloated turds (granted I never liked Metallica anyway...)

Although the Pixies avoided this, being 12 when Trompe le Monde came out, I didn't get into them until the albums were reissued much later. So for quite a while, Surfer Rosa wasn't my favourite of theirs - this was purely because the EP, Come on Pilgrim, was tagged on at the end. Some excellent stuff on there, but it did rather spoil the mood of the album - the production isn't the same as the later album and it does jar a little.

Finally, I hadn't really listened to these albums for a long time, it's amazing how quickly I remembered all the words and how right they all felt. This is what I worry I've lost (there is an obvious element of being older and therefore not necessarily having the pressure to be quite so tribal about music as one does at the age of 16) over the years. The quick and easy availability of music now, coupled with my desire to hear lots of new (both as in "just out" and "new to me") music means that, often, I may like something but only end up listening to it a few times, because there's something new to try out. I wouldn't like to go back the way (for one, I couldn't set up a massive playlist of roots and dub reggae and stick it on random, I know, I know - try it in summer though; great fun!) but there is sometimes a sense that it would be nice not to feel that I must hear everything ever BECAUSE I CAN! (This is my problem and I'll deal with it. Maybe.)

Currently listening: Pixies – Surfer Rosa