by Ben Sisario
Even if the song did come to life as an undeveloped fetus-premature, like The Boy in Eraserbead--it is not without its charms. Like "Hey," it is a moment of respite. A mostly acoustic number, the song derives its only percussion from a thunderclap bass drum. The unusual lineup-Deal on slide guitar, David Lovering on bass-loosened the vibe, and Thompson and Deal squeezed all their energy into a gorgeously perverse feline harmony. (That's Charles on "top.") Norton drenched it with reverb, and a gentle but percussive acoustic strum sets the funeral-march tempo. Santiago provided one of his creakiest solos, which Norton mixed to sound as if it were coming from deep down a darkened pit. Put together, it's a haunted house of a song, too dark to see much of what is going on. We are led only by the eerie harmonies. And, we gotta admit, Charles was right about those lyrics. They really are throwaways:
"It is shady." The band was indeed known to smoke quantities of marijuana, but even so...
The second verse repeats the strangers/dangers/sorrows line and adds the following, which would seem to be key:
So what does "silver" mean? I ask Thompson. He shrugs.
"Gouge Away"
If Doolittle had to begin with "Debaser," it could only end with "Gouge Away." Sleek and cyclical, it's another textbook Pixies song, a flawless demonstration of style and vision. But while "Debaser" celebrated naughtiness and arty mischief, "Gouge Away" is where the album's biggest themessex, death, defiance, God-collide, resulting in a big, crushing, everybody-dies-in-the-end collapse.
The song is another bloody biblical adaptation, this one the story of Samson and Delilah from judges 16. It opens in medial res, with a spare chorus played on Kim Deal's steely bass and a stiff, processed beat that is the quintessence of 80s British percussion-the kind of gothic dance groove that gets under your skin but you can't imagine anyone actually dancing to. Thompson begins to sing on the third beat, softly but with a sneer:
It's the voice of Samson provoking an enemy that has not yet been identified. Come on, whoever you are, give it to me. As the chorus moves into a bridge, with an uptick in intensity-a creeping guitar joins the bass, the hi-hat opens a crack-Deal hums seductively, reeling Samson in (along with the listener). The temperature rises further with a portentous siren call on Joey Santiago's guitar, and soon, as the verse arrives, waves of acidic grunge crash on the city walls. "Tame" and other songs played with the surprise!-we're- loud dynamic, but here the change is gradual and carefully finessed.
The story mingles sex and politics on a small scale with gigantic divine retribution, as Samson the seduced and ruined becomes Samson the instrument of God's fury Thompson's 100-words-or-less summary: "Big strong Samson, toughest guy in town, partying with the Philistineshe's got this Achilles' heel thing, you kno-,q with his hair. Somehow he lets some girl know what's up. That's how the Philistines capture him. She goes in and cuts his hair. He becomes weak. God takes his strength away from him. There he is, chained, his eyes gouged out. Made a mockery by the pagans, you know Chained there to the pillars. He asks God for strength one more time, to avenge these sinners. Pulls the columns in, causes the building to collapse on everybody. Pretty great story."
As in "Dead," Thompson interprets the story of a biblical hero as a compressed drama of self-destructive psychology Like David, Samson gives in to temptation:
and soon pays for it. In "Debaser," eyeball damage is the pleasure of the singer/protagonist, inflicted on another, but here he becomes the victim, crying out over his "spooned" eyes. Still he tells shapely Delilah to bring it on. G'abead, baby, gouge away. The recurring chorus suggests that all along Samson knows what's coming to him. It's no surprise. David welcomed his curse-"gimme dead!"-and Samson's call to his captors is a similar invitation. "It's a taunt," Thompson says. "Go ahead, have your fun. Gouge away because something's going to happen. No one here gets out alive."
Retribution rocks:
In the Bible, of course, Samson really does mean "kill us all"-he knows that he has only one chance to get back at those nasty Dagon-worshippers, and offers God the kind of prayer that might come from John J. Rambo. "And Samson said, `Let me die with the Philistines.' And he bowed himself with all his might; and the house fell upon the lords, and upon all the people that were therein. So the dead which he slew at his death were more than they which he slew in his life" (Judges 16:30). Come on, God, gimme some strength one last time-I'll kill these all these fuckers! I'll kill more people than I've ever killed before, and I've killed lots!
Samson's single-mindedness is matched by the simplicity of the music. It's a three-chord song, with the same pro- gres sion-G- sharp minor, B, E-running through the whole thing in varying shades of aggression. Controlled entirely by dynamics and arrangement, "Gouge Away" is as much an achievement for Gil Norton as it is for the band. His hand is evident in the matrix of intersecting lines that keep the song in constant motion, rising and falling, growing and decaying. The Whore demo of the song had all the parts there but with no motion. (Thompson's androgynous Iggyisms, however, are worth hearing.)
There's a beautiful system of weights and pulleys at work to push each section through to the next. The first bridge, for example, is a twelve-bar composite of two parts, the first seven featuring Deal as Delilah cooing an ascending-note come-hither, with Santiago's wail taking the remaining five. The next time the bridge comes, two bars have been shaved from it, and Thompson hums a high descending line in counterpoint with the bassline-when they meet, Santiago's guitar ignites.
It's a perfectly symmetrical bookend to "Debaser," which began the album as a release of musical and erotic energy without care or worry-"ha ha ha ho!" A little gang of eyeball-slicing demons was unleashed in that song, led by Sex and Death. In the spirit of "un chien andalusia"-wild, unfettered creativity-those ideas largely sustain the entire album. But by the end, the whole thing starts to contract. The liberating and explosive songs on the first part of the album ("Debaser," "Vave of Mutilation," "Here Comes Your Man," "Monkey Gone to Heaven") are matched at the end with dense, claustrophobic ones that seem to pull inward ("There Goes My Gun," "Hey," "Silver," "Gouge Away").
Throughout Doolittle, Charles Thompson often shows himself to be a conservative thinker despite his screaming identification as a "debaser." He warns about ecological disaster and nuclear war; frets over deaths of all kinds, accidental and murderous; judges women as too flirtatious, dismissing them as "whores" falling over in their heels and desecrating the holy birth canal. Thompson never forgot his Bible stories, and as a good Sunday school boy, he knew how his vision had to end. Just as in a great tragedy, the hero must get his terrible vengeance, the walls have to come down, and everybody dies.
The end.
