{"id":543950,"date":"2026-07-11T05:28:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-11T05:28:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/543950\/"},"modified":"2026-07-11T05:28:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-11T05:28:10","slug":"pixies-complete-b-sides-1988-97-remaster-album-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/543950\/","title":{"rendered":"Pixies: Complete B Sides: 1988-97 (Remaster) Album Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

What is a B-side to a band as delightfully peculiar as Pixies<\/a>? What happens when you flip over the group who influenced a whole generation of young punks with their loud-quiet-loud aesthetic while surfing their own boldly idiosyncratic gamma wave?<\/p>\n

Consider Complete B-Sides: 1988-97, originally released in 2001 and now getting a remaster as part of the band\u2019s 40th anniversary celebrations. On its evidence, the Pixies B-side is a place for dazzling tunes, ferocious power, tender emotion, vocal interplay, topsy-turvy songwriting, and the odd cover version\u2014not unlike the band\u2019s classic albums, really, although the tiniest bit freer, with the deviance cranked up a notch as Pixies let their hair down.<\/p>\n

No score yet, be the first to add.<\/p>\n

More importantly, a Pixies B-side is (generally) not a place where standards fall, as shown over the 25 songs on this album, taken from Pixies singles from \u201cGigantic\u201d in 1988 to \u201cDebaser (Live)\u201d in 1997. Two of the songs here\u2014the creepily cosmic \u201cInto the White\u201d and aching Neil Young cover \u201cWinterlong\u201d\u2014actually feature on the band\u2019s 2004 best-of compilation, and there is no reason why a good half dozen more tracks from B-Sides couldn\u2019t do the same. (I\u2019ll go for \u201cRiver Euphrates,\u201d \u201cManta Ray,\u201d \u201cWeird at My School,\u201d \u201cDancing the Manta Ray,\u201d \u201cSanto,\u201d and \u201cBuild High.\u201d You may have your own.)<\/p>\n

Like any great indie B-side collection,Complete B-Sides is an alternative stroll through Pixies\u2019 best moves or a Through the Looking-Glass greatest hits. Everything you could ever want from Pixies is here\u2014just not quite in the places you expected.<\/p>\n

Want guitar-wielding, huge-chorus-screaming Pixies \u00e0 la \u201cDebaser\u201d? Try \u201cRiver Euphrates,\u201d a full-bodied and swaggering re-recording of the Surfer Rosa track with producer Gil Norton. Tender pop Pixies with just the right amount of grit? Lend an aquatic ear to \u201cManta Ray.\u201d Angular, dramatic, and lopsided Pixies, with a dash of Spanish salsa? \u201cSanto\u201d has it all. \u201cWeird At My School,\u201d originally released as a B-side to \u201cMonkey Gone To Heaven,\u201d is a lot like the classic \u201cVamos\u201d in its frantic rockabilly scramble. But it adds the slightest edge of improbable musical theater with its rambunctious hits punctuating the chorus and an oom-pah-ish bridge. \u201cBuild High\u201d is full-on cowpunk Pixies, like \u201cCrackity Jones\u201d with a bone-dry sense of humour. Sometimes the mirroring is even more literal: \u201cWave of Mutilation\u201d appears here as \u201cWave of Mutilation (UK Surf)\u201d\u2014a slowed down, twanged-up and very charming take on the Doolittle classic.<\/p>\n

Fans of Pixies\u2019 oddball cover versions are also well served by Complete B-Sides. The band ratchet up the nauseous horror of Eraserhead\u2019s \u201cIn Heaven (Lady in the Radiator Song),\u201d inject The Yardbirds\u2019 \u201cEvil Hearted You\u201d with telenovela passion, and remodel the theme tune from a notorious \u201980s video game into a surf punk swirl on \u201cTheme From Narc.\u201d Pixies\u2019 take on \u201cWinterlong\u201d is already an anthem, replacing the trundling Neil Young original in the hearts of a generation of alternative music fans. But the band\u2019s cover of Young\u2019s 1968 song \u201cI\u2019ve Been Waiting for You\u201d is lesser known yet almost as strong, thanks to a magically understated vocal from Kim Deal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What is a B-side to a band as delightfully peculiar as Pixies? What happens when you flip over…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":543951,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[692,93,61,60,278,514],"class_list":["post-543950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-albums","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-music","tag-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=543950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543950\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/543951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=543950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=543950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=543950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}