“Dig for Fire” is my favorite song by the Pixies, and this is my favorite Pixies album. So diverse and strange.

Kind of my personal favorite, too. I think there’s a level where solid-straight-across albums like Doolittle turn out as broadly appealing “classics,” whereas albums like this — which range from soft-and-weird to loud-and-weird, encompassing a wide spread of a band’s ideas — always turn out fan favorites.

Also I had this album in my bag in French class in high school, and my flouncy French teacher commended my taste and said he personally enjoyed Astrid Gilberto quite a bit, which is part of how I first wound up hearing Astrid Gilberto.

I think maybe Bossanova is the equivalent of if Pavement had made Wowee Zowee except it hadn’t felt scattered at all — just as solid and coherent as Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, only with a wider spread of ideas in play. (The two bands’ early albums actually match up decently that way, in reputation and all: the first scrappy indie one that full-on rock geeks will always swear by, then the really consistent popular one that lots of different people like, and then the “we have lots of different ideas” one. After that it falls apart.)

probably the biggest “grower” in the pixies discography, and the least-overplayed.

Yeah,this is my favourite Pixies—followed by Trompe Le Monde.

i’ve been saying this for years.

It’s got some of my favorite songs (Rock Music, Dig For Fire, The Happening...), but Doolittle is pretty much a force of nature, people.

“OK, maybe a bit more of Kim Deal (who is notably absent).”

I always thought it was a bit of a shame they didn’t have more tunes where both of them sang. I think Black Frank kind of took over on Bossanova and really it was the beginning of the end, as Mrs. John Murphy took her tunes to the Breeders. In the end they ended up as two slightly interesting musical projects instead of one very interesting musical project.

Velouria total classic, overall a solid effort, well done guys I’d give ya a B. In the category of Pixies albums that aren’t Doolittle I tend to rate it alongside Trompe le Monde—TlM wins out on the weirdness stakes but Bossanova is more consistent.

I agree with Johnny Fever, Doolittle is their masterpiece.

I love the A side of Bossanova, there are some of the best songs of the Pixies’ career—(Is She Weird, Velouria, Allison...). But the other side is much less frantic, so the best A side of a Pixies record is Bossanova’s, but as a whole album it’s just the 3rd after Doolittle and Surfer Rosa.

i see the classic appeal of the surfer rosa/doolittle era but i definitely prefer the bossanova/trompe le monde era myself, i think it’s just more fun for some reason

the only good one, if you ask me.

Christgau nicely sums up the record’s appeal:

Though the words are less willful, they’re still mostly indecipherable without the crib sheet and still mostly incomprehensible with it—leisure-class kiddies grasping at straws (or women: Black Francis has gone through three girlfriends by cut five) as the solar system bangs and whimpers to a halt. But these collegians are obscurantists no longer. Announcing their newfound religious faith with a surf-metal instrumental (“Cecilia Ann,” who’s not a girlfriend though Francis loves her best of all), they march out tunes so simple and confident and power riffs so grandly declamatory that you learn to understand the choruses by singing them. The beats are lively. The three-minute songs don’t bash you over the head with their punk/pop brevity. Neither do the two-minute songs. If they weren’t still a little gothic-surrealist they might even be too easy—but they ain’t. A

that review is terrible.

The beats are lively.!!!

God, that is a terrible review.