At the turn of the twenty-first century, the New York City music scene floated in a surfaceless orbit of samplers, shoegazers, and delay pedals. The city's guitars lay choked by a digital fog, or else they lay dustily forgotten. Then, in 2002, an unbridled five-song EP by an unknown band brought noise, sex, passion, and mayhem back to the stage and to the stereo. The band's name evoked the kid who knows that whoever's in charge is full of s**t -- "yeah, yeah, yeah" -- but it also rang with the affirmation of pure rock and roll: F**k yeah! The Yeah Yeah Yeahs' first full-length album, Fever to Tell, was simultaneously filthy, infectious, sloppy, and brilliant. You could dance to it, and you could probably die to it. "Maps" was nominated for a Grammy, and the record went gold in the UK.
The Yeah Yeah Yeahs spawned a new breed of power trio. They work together as a single organism, but each member maintains their own personality and contributes their own strengths. Think of them as a three-piece Earth, Wind, and Fire. On second thought, it's probably better if you didn't do that. Brian Chase's drumming couldn't be tighter or more precise, even as the band descends into the pitch-dark caves of noise he frequents in his free-jazz spare time--and one can hear rigor and experiment behind even his simplest, no-frills (or -fills) rhythms. Nick Zinner's guitar pushes back--hard--against Chase's formalism, grounding the group in rock and roll at its ballsiest, dirtiest, and most shredly. His soaring, sometimes grinding lines are wires connecting Chase's drums to the psychologically kaleidoscopic vocals of Karen O, who, as the New Yorker has noted, would have been a success "had she appeared with nothing more than a microphone and a pair of maracas."
The band developed an itchy and unshakeable aversion to repeating itself. It would have been easy enough to record another spastic, live-sounding garage album after the success of Fever, but their next full-length, 2007's Show Your Bones, added acoustic guitar and more serious compositions that picked up on the direction suggested by a song like "Maps." Rolling Stone called the record a "textural triumph," and the group honed their legendary stage performance -- one cannot understand the Yeah Yeah Yeahs without seeing Karen O writhing and thriving onstage. A handful of great songs that didn't make it onto Bones became tour staples (and fan favorites), and the band sat down with the celebrated PiL/Slits/Gang of Four producer Nick Launay to record 2007's EP Is Is.
Last year, the Yeahs shook their Etch A Sketch® clean to start work on a new record with producers Dave Sitek and Nick Launay. "We usually go into these things totally blind," Karen O said. "We have no idea what's going to happen when we sit down." This empty page feeling was helped by geography: they began writing the record in the middle of a snowstorm, in a hundred-year-old barn in rural Massachusetts. "You looked out the window and it was just pastures and pastures of snow-covered fields," she said. Zinner had brought along a synthesizer to work with during the writing session, not expecting it to end up on the album. "That was an old keyboard I bought on eBay," he said. "Literally, it was the first day we were setting up, plugging things in. Ten minutes later, we'd written that song 'Skeletons.'" The song--and the whole record--have a new feeling of space and atmosphere that's unusual for the band. "Obviously, synths have been in rock music forever," Zinner says. "But to us it feels new, which is all we really care about--that excitement."
It's Blitz! signals both a glance backward and a step forward for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Zinner's vintage Arp--the same model used on records by The Cars, Joy Division, and Kraftwerk--contributes atmospheric washes ("Skeletons"), disco wiggles ("Dance till you're dead!" Karen sings on "Heads Will Roll"), and New Wave melodrama ("Soft Shock"). The first single, "Zero," combines all these elements to create a dance-floor anthem that sings directly to the listener. "We've got a death grip on the adolescent way of feeling things," O said. That's something I'll never be able to shake in the music I write. It's almost feels like a John Hughes 80s movie." But acknowledging the past in this way doesn't sound make for a nostalgic-sounding album. "I think there's a cool stability reflected in this record," Brian Chase says. "It reflects our transformation, and how we've developed as people."

被切割的眼球、文身的乳头、美人鱼、妓女和冲向厕所的圣经人物--这就是波士顿四人组合“小妖精”第二张专辑《都立特》中的一些精彩画面。布莱克．弗朗西斯（Black Francis）的超现实品位为乐队带来了诡异的深度，但他们的音乐在今天更能引起共鸣。简单来说《都立特》继承了80年代美国地下凶狠的硬核并使之发扬光大。当柯特．科本承认《少年心气》（Smells Like Teen Spirit）中完美的动静结合是照搬“小妖精”时，他只是证实了忠实歌迷已经知道的事。如今，《都立特》听起来像一张终极的另类摇滚唱片：重吉他噪音、朋克速度、冲浪摇滚、冲天的圣歌、暗示抗争污秽与异类的歌词，以及布莱克．弗朗西斯的超自然嚎叫。意料之中，却证明了无法战胜。在接下来的两张专辑后，贝司手奇姆．迪尔（Kim Deal）创建了“饲养员”（The Breeders）。布莱克．弗朗西斯把名字换成了弗朗克．布莱克（Frank Black），生产了数张失水准的个人专辑。鼓手戴夫．洛弗（Dave Lovering）则成为了一个魔术师。

When they first hit the underground scene, the Pixies were like an exotic drink that hid its sweetness behind a ferocious bite. The album's production is like a crude explosion: every strum and clang comes down with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. English and Spanish lyrics collide as singer Black Francis (later Frank Black) shouts in a hoarse monotone and Mrs. John Murphy (later Kim Deal of the Breeders) backs him up with throaty wails. Yet somehow the clash of these bruising titans makes for tracks that print indelibly upon your consciousness--once let in. Kurt Cobain is their most famous student. He grafted the Pixies' time-honored craft of the big bang theory onto Nirvana's biggest hits. (You start with a quiet verse and then explode for catharsis in the chorus--evidenced best here with "I've Been Fired.") The Pixies themselves have served quietly, attaining post-punk godfather status not by tooting their own horns, but through the praise of a steady stream of genuflecting admirers whose word of mouth continues to increase the band's deserved critical standing. --Rob O'Connor

Death to the Pixies was the first Pixies best-of compilation, released by 4AD in the UK on October 6, 1997 and 4AD/Elektra the following day in the United States to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the band's debut. It covered the years 1987 to 1991. It is now out of print, having been replaced by the 2004 compilation Wave of Mutilation: Best of Pixies. A limited edition of the compilation also included a second CD with a live performance taken from Vredenburg, Utrecht, Netherlands on September 25, 1990.

When Rough Trade reissued the Pixies' seminal full-length debut album, Surfer Rosa, on CD, they added the terrific mini-album Come on Pilgrim as a bonus. While it's nice to have these two records on one disc, the sequencing of Come on Pilgrim after Surfer Rosa is a little disconcerting, since the two albums each have distinctive sounds that clash slightly. Steve Albini's production of Surfer Rosa is metallic and spare — it's in black and white, with no shades of grey and no color. Come on Pilgrim, on the other hand, is filled with greys and colors, and while the contrast between the two is certainly interesting, it would be more enlightening if the mini-LP was placed before Surfer Rosa. Nevertheless, some fans might like having both albums on one disc, but buying them individually is a better move and, in any case, a little more cost-effective as well.

西雅圖搖滾經典大團Nirvana在1993年所發行的第3張專輯【In Utero】最終成了該團的最後一張錄音室專輯，製作人Steve Albini以未加修飾的不成熟音樂風格錄音方式，將主唱Kurt Cobain、貝斯手Krist Novoselic、鼓手Dave Grohl三人最具對抗性格，卻同時帶有容易受傷情感的作品原貌鉅細靡遺地呈現。
Nirvana在1991年以專輯『Nevermind』締造全球超過3000萬張銷售，一舉將最真實的搖滾樂重新帶上全美流行專輯榜的冠軍，如此傲人的成就，讓下一張專輯【In Utero】成為樂團首度帶著樂迷期待心理所灌錄的作品，所以，從一開場有著不太穩定感覺旋律表現的歌曲"Serve The Servants"，寫給搖滾歌手老婆Courtney Love的全美現代搖滾榜冠軍曲"Heart-Shaped Box"，一直到痛苦與快樂情緒交疊的全美現代搖滾榜冠軍作"All Apologies"為止，總是令人難以置信且又充滿矛盾性格的搖滾樂團Nirvana就在始料未及的情況下變成一個世代的代言人，【In Utero】象徵他們已成功到達權力的頂峰，並擺脫所有的掙扎去完成一張自覺應該要做、也很想做的專輯。
蟬連英、美排行榜冠軍，全美熱銷500萬張，入選滾石雜誌「史上最偉大500張專輯」名單的大碟【In Utero】在2013年發行滿20週年，此套豪華特典收錄：2013年在舉世聞名的錄音室Abbey Road Studios進行母帶重製處理的原始專輯曲目，未曾曝光過的demo帶、混音版、B面曲，以及1993年Nirvana最後一次巡迴演唱會「Live And Loud」的現場實況DVD與現場收音CD。