Husker Du

Sorry, it needed saying.

I prefer Nirvana, but not by a huge amount.

boo boo is back!

I like the Pixies but for me, Nirvana, always.

I've been here the whole time silly. :wave:

I like a whole load of stuff by the Pixies and especially the Trompe le Monde album but I still think Nirvana are better.

Well my two cents:

Sure. Nirvana were heavily influenced by Pixies, no question there. Cobain has spoken expressly of how he set out to emulate the Pixies' iconic soft-loud-soft-loud dynamic on Smells Like Teen Spirit, and you find the technique on a number of the most popular Nirvana songs. Indeed, those bands most heavily inspired by Nirvana (e.g. Bush) sought to repeat Nirvana's own use of the whole soft-loud stop-start thing. So a lineage leading back to Pixies is clearly established...

...but that's where it stops. The similarities end there. There's little else to tie Pixies' dark though generally upbeat, racy and fun-inflected groove to Nirvana's sinister, warped world of tortured and dread-fraught death rock. The stark contrast in mood makes the two bands for the most part entirely uncomparable.



Cobain penned some of the greatest mainstream rock hits of all time. In terms of pop credentials of course Nirvana must win the contest hands down. But in terms of raw songwriting ability, as can only be captured by the acid-test measure of overall consistency, Black Francis comes out of top. Nirvana had way too much fluff on their records. In Utero for instance was a great album, but not song-for-song. It is great when taken as a whole. Pixies on the other hand are great by the sum of their parts and the parts themselves.

Pixies are a better band for me on the whole, basing my judgment on diversity and consistency above all else.

As for two or three singles Nirvana has out, I can't stand Nirvana. Even then, the singles aren't very remarkable as they are catchy. Either that or the music hasn't aged well, grunge is a genre than has plaques the radio stations for the passed 2 decades, and many people define grunge as 'rock'. Even though Pixies classified as grunge, Pixies never take themselves seriously in their compositions, and aren't bred from cliche under a cliche.

Neither is Nirvana. The sound certainly wasn't cliche at the time (and I still don't think it is) and there's a good difference between the original grunge movement and the post-grunge, modern rock stuff on the radio now.

And both bands took themselves seriously, both Francis and Cobain wrote very personal songs and sung them passionatly.

For me it's a case of The Pixies invented it, Nirvana did it better.