I find myself listening to Dino every day, but the Pixies much less frequently. I love both of them, and it's a hard call, but I'd say Dino. Partly because I love noise, which Pixies had but not like anything on You're Living All Over Me or Dinosaur, and J.'s guitar playing blows my mind. But the main reason is the fundamental difference I've seen in the two bands. Dinosaur Jr. appears to make their music with ease; watching J play live he simply stepped back from the mic and shredded his guitar without ever trying, it appeared. Their music, when you listen to it (at least for me), gives off an impression of being the only thing in the world that matters. The Pixies, on the other hand, often have quite a different feel. Their music always has a strange foreboding presence of unease and angst that builds up until the songs either explode or end without a resolution to the feel, leaving their music with the feeling that it could fall apart at any minute but they just manage to hold on and play their songs (this may sound like a bad thing to some of you, but it is fantastic to me). The lyrics of The Pixies are also often very ****ed up, whereas Dinosaur Jr can have dark songs but not approaching what The Pixies sing about. A last point is that I feel inclined to think that The Pixies must have been influenced by Dinosaur Jr (or perhaps Dinosaur at the time), at least in using noise and their dynamics (the soft-loud-soft thing).
And Lou Barlow blows Kim Deal out of the water, imo.
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