Chained to the pillars

Pixies - 'Gouge Away' (Doolittle - 1989)

There is very little doubt in my mind that 1989’s Doolittle by Pixies is one of my favourite albums of all time. What the band do well is evident on many tracks on their second full album but for me, the opening and closing songs, ‘Debaser’ and ‘Gouge Away’ showcase their talents at the highest echelon. Both pieces are examples of the band’s members performing their roles with aplomb, and the individual excellence adds up to collective brilliance and levitates those songs.

In between those songs are half a dozen copper-bottomed indie classics; from the sun-flecked surf of ‘Wave of Mutilation’, the twisted beauty of ‘Monkey Gone To Heaven’ and the indie disco staple ‘Here Comes Your Man’ On the second side of the record there is less signalling out of individual tracks, or at least there was until 2005 when a clip of two Israeli teenagers performing the song went viral, it was uploaded to YouTube just four months after Me at the zoo.

There are some conflicting opinions on what ‘Gouge Away’ is about. There’s the literal interpretation that we will cover. There is a school of thought speculating that all the references to sleeping in, broken arms, gouging, spoons and a reference to a “plant of renown¹” mean that it is actually about her0in usage. This is intriguing, but it is probably better to go with the more obvious answer.

Most people think it is a song continuing Doolittle’s use of Biblical stories for lyrical inspiration as heard in ‘Dead’. ‘Gouge Away’ follows the story from the Book of Judges about Samson. For those that aren’t up on their Old Testament, Samson was given super strength by God but relied on his long hair for this. As ‘Gouge Away’ tells us, his wife Delilah betrayed him for money - by shaving off his locks, breaking a vow Samson’s mother made.² This renders Samson defenceless - for now, and he had his eyes gouged out.

Black Francis has him taunting The Philistines even as they torment him. - “Stay all day”. After they subdue him, The Philistines celebrate for three days and get the now blind Samson to amuse them. Samson’s hair is returning by now, and having reconnected with God, he pulls down the whole temple with his “holy fingers”, killing himself but taking many of his tormentors with him.

There is probably only one more lyric to unpick; we can assume that "Missy Aggravation” is Delilah who manipulates Samson into revealing his secret, but this is one of the only references that can’t be traced back to a section in the Old Testament. Some have said that “Missy Aggravation” was a real woman, known to Black Francis, who did have that nickname.

In April 1989, Black Francis confirmed the subject and flagged that the song doesn’t directly mention Samson or Delilah.

It’s a story about Sampson and Delilah, you’re the first person that’s actually realised – probably because the song doesn’t actually mention Sampson or Delilah. It’s a sort of s3x story: Delilah shows up as a secret spy of the Philistines and has an affair with Sampson. I don’t know what he was getting out of it. But enough s3x and drugs and relaxation to give up his secrets. Maybe he loved her, I dunno. But they gouged his eyes out in the end.

That’s the lyrics unpicked, but what else is going on here?

The band are very fond of the song; Black Francis has told Esquire he thinks it is the best on the record, and drummer David Lovering told MusicRadar:

It's the perfect example of a true Pixies song. It's got the quiet verse and then it goes all-out for the chorus. The way it's structured, it's two opposing layers. I remember when we recorded it, I thought it was the most compelling thing we ever did.

When played live, the song can be converted from a sub-3-minute to a near 5-minute song by inserting an extended intro, as seen here at BBC 6Music.

Coming back to the idea that this is a song that is greater than the sum of its parts, we can enjoy Lovering’s taught and tight beat on the drums grounds us while Joey Santiago’s guitar paces at a safe distance before intermittently charging at us like a zoo animal that can’t quite reach us.

As Lovering said above, it has those quiet, sparse moments with bassist Kim Deal softly cooing her sweet vocals before the song reaches a verse and turns. It loudly lashed out with cymbals and amps driven into the red to support Black Francis’s guttural yelping. - This type of high contrast is a clear and acknowledged template for what Nirvana would do on Nevermind, and also other grunge bands in the early 1990s would try and fail to replicate. I don’t think they or Pixies themselves ever got the template as nailed down as they do on ‘Gouge Away’.

If we can pin down a moment that this song transcends, it is that last chorus. Rather than ratchet back down again, it holds the volume of the previous verse. As the temple comes crashing down around Samson and his self-destruction, the song does the same by switching to an unrestrained cacophony as the music rushes to a conclusion like a jet-powered steamroller.

1. Ezekiel 34:29

2. You will become pregnant and have a son whose head is never to be touched by a razor because the boy is to be a Nazirite, dedicated to God from the womb. - Judges 13:5