The Pixies have released four archival recordings to streaming services for the first time: an early Steve Albini version of "Dig for Fire," "Go Man Go," "Brackish Boy" and "Punk Loop." The tracks had been confined to bonus 7-inches in limited Dinked International editions of the newly remastered Bossanova and Trompe le Monde, as ROMBO reported in June. Now anyone with a subscription can hear them.
The Albini take was cut in late 1987, during the Surfer Rosa sessions, close to three years before the version that opened side two of Bossanova. The official channel has posted "Dig for Fire (Albini Version)" alongside the release, and the difference is the point: the song as it existed before the band slowed it into the austere, almost spoken shape fans know.
"Go Man Go" carries the longest thread. Black Francis and Kim Deal wrote it together, and both bands recorded it: the Pixies during Bossanova, the Breeders around Last Splash. Neither made the album. The Breeders' take drifted through a bootleg demo and turned up occasionally on stage before its master resurfaced on the 30th anniversary edition of Last Splash in 2023. Hearing the Pixies' own pass at a song Deal carried elsewhere is the closest this batch comes to a document of the two of them writing in the same room.
"Brackish Boy" is an early form of the song Francis re-recorded for his 1993 self-titled debut as Frank Black, and "Punk Loop" comes from the 1991 Trompe le Monde sessions, logged on tape as "'Punk Loop' MSTR." The band's 40th anniversary run, announced in March, continues with South American dates from March and a spring arena tour with Queens of the Stone Age that opens May 1 in San Diego and closes May 24 in Boston.
Start with "Go Man Go," and listen for whose instincts win in the arrangement. It sits between two of the most distinctive writers of their generation, and the tape is one of the few places that meeting survives.
