Pixies

Jagged rock, sweetened pop. The Boston-based Pixies were one of those late-'80s college-radio bands that changed the lives of their fans, presenting a heady alternative to the hair metal of the day in their choppy guitar rhythms and mash-up of indie guitar-rock, surf music, sharp harmonies, and muscular funk. Without Frank Black paving the way on tracks like the rattling "Bone Machine," there'd be no Nirvana — in fact, Kurt Cobain admitted he was basically trying to rip off the Pixies when he wrote “Smells Like Teen Spirit” — and with the brilliant “Here Comes Your Man,” from 1989’s Doolittle, the band flirts lasciviously with pop without dulling its underground edge. The Pixies keep pushing that signature rough/smooth dynamic, in Next Steps.

Straddling the punk of "Broken Face" and the sticky D.I.Y. pop of "River Euphrates" in the course of their epic, abrasive, Steve Albini-produced full length debut, Surfer Rosa (1988), the Pixies offered something for everyone, and that holds true wherever you delve in their catalog. Frank Black's bluster (the livid, pernicious heaviness of "Gouge Away") is customarily offset by bassist Kim Deal's syrupy harmonies (laid on the dreamy acoustic carpet of "Winterlong"), as can also be heard on the breezy, Beach Boys-inspired "UK Surf Mix" of "Wave of Mutilation" — the perfect title for a Pixies tune, as the band flavored its splintered shards of rhythm with sugary pop hooks. Several killer B-sides and leftfield covers lurk among our Pixies Deep Cuts.

Enigmatic frontman Charles Michael Kittridge Thompson IV (a.k.a. Black Francis, a.k.a. Frank Black) provided the surrealist, left-field sensibility that gave the Pixies its dark, puckish charm. Whether it's "wanting to be a singer like Lou Reed" or worrying about "losing my life to a whore with disease" ("I've Been Tired"), fantasizing about a "lady in the radiator" or contemplating having “sex with the nuns" ("Weird at My School"), the Pixies' fearless leader didn't dub himself Black for nothing. Here’s a frontman who knew how to twist a classic in order to create a cover for the ages — check out his Spanish language version of the Yardbirds’ “Evil Hearted You.”

Although the Pixies were never as influential in the States as they were in Britain and Europe, their triumphant 2004 reunion proved an important coming-of-age for their Gen X fan base, who fervently believed that this band was worthy of hardcore devotion. Songs like the jokey "Monkey Gone to Heaven" and the kaleidoscopic "Here Comes Your Man" define an audience forging its own musical identity, and remain unmistakable badges proudly worn by those who prefer to stand outside the mainstream. Combine the prickly Frank Black and come-hither Kim Deal, anchored by the four-to-the-floor rhythm combo of bassist Joey Santiago and drummer David Lovering, and you have post-punk heirs to a rock ’n’ roll tradition of challenging — and heightening — their fans' preconceptions.