Vinyl Tap: Pixies - "Break My Body" - Page 2

But for those who take their humor black, and their surrealism harrowing, there’s also ample opportunity on Surfer Rosa. "Bone Machine" showcases the whimsical and warped, at times in the same verse: "I was talking to peachy-peach about kissy-kiss/ He bought me a soda/He bought me a soda and tried to molest me in the parking lot!"

The lyrics to “Broken Face” seem as punk and pugnacious as a Buzzcocks' tempo tantrum: “I got no lips, I got no tongue/ Where there were eyes there's only space.”

But more than anything, Surfer Rosa, as spotty and sketched-out as it sometimes seems, serves as a promising hallmark of influence that it became to such artists as Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Radiohead, the Strokes, and Pavement, among many others. Especially inspiring in alternative rock circles has been the Pixies’ stop-start sonics, marked with muted, self-possessed verses, alternating with explosive, primal-scream choruses. No song exemplifies the career-wide sound Pixies sound in Surfer Rosa as much as the standout “Break My Body,” an irresistible two-minute burst of bristling guitar and upfront vocal from one who seems to have lived to tell a tale, enigmatic but perhaps open to interpretation.

I'm the hard loser
You'll find me crashing through my mother's door
I am the ugly lover
You'll find us rolling on the dirty floor

Break my body, hold my bones, hold my bones
Break my body, hold my bones, hold my bones
Break my body, hold my bones, hold my bones

I'm a belly dancer
I'll shake forever and I'll never care
I'm a building jumper
Roof to roof you see me flying in the air

Break my body, hold my bones, hold my bones
Break my body, hold my bones, hold my bones
Break my body, hold my bones, hold my bones

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Article Author: Gordon Hauptfleisch

Gordon Hauptfleisch is a Blogcritics Books Editor, freelance writer, and book reviewer for San Diego Union Tribune Books (R.I.P.). For many years he worked in and managed bookstores and record stores, and most recently was purchasing manager for San Diego Technical Books. …

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