Wave of Mutilation: Best of Pixies (2004, No. Surfer Rosa (1988, did not chart): 705,000, certified goldĭoolittle (1989, No. These bands don't do platinum.)Ĭome on Pilgrim EP (1987, did not chart): 198,000 I'm including each disc's Billboard album-chart peak, if any cumulative sales through January 2015 and - in very rare cases - gold status, which is the RIAA's certification for shipment of 500,000 albums. I'll go in chronological order, listing only canonical albums and EPs and major compilations. Let's take each band, run down its sales history and consider the X-factors (no pun intended) that gave Pixies, Pavement and Sleater-Kinney whatever success they've had.
In one of my periodic attempts to merge two of my obsessions - Gen-X rock and chart nerdery - I asked the helpful folks at Nielsen Soundscan for a breakdown of these three bands' career stats. Indeed, given the sheer amount of press and praise these three bands have received, a walk through their sales and chart histories offers a chill-wind realization of what it means to be called "greatest indie band of your generation" - that and four bucks will buy you a latte. To be sure, one shouldn't overstate the size of Pixies', Pavement's or Sleater-Kinney's fanbases, either. But Kevin Shields's and Jeff Magnum's respective noms de bande had such small recorded legacies, and were gone so long (22 and 15 years, respectively), those comebacks felt vital but more marginal. Or, on the complete opposite end of the spectrum, the recent returns of indie obsessions My Bloody Valentine and Neutral Milk Hotel after years of inactivity did much to reenergize and reaffirm their grass-roots fanbases. But there's a crucial difference with those classic-rock dinosaurs - they had hits and sold out arenas the first time around, and their comebacks were reboots of already-lucrative machines. Sure, bands reforming for a lucrative tour and/or album after years of public denials is the oldest story in the book - everyone from The Eagles to The Police to Van Halen to Pink Floyd fit that description. These three groups form a very specific returning-band category. And Pavement, standard-bearer of '90s slack-rock and so-called " indie-est band ever," returned for a brief victory-lap tour in 2010. Pixies, the late '80s indie-punk colossus and inventor of the quiet-loud sound of '90s alternative rock, came back in 2004 for a second life that's still ongoing. I'm talking about Pixies and Pavement - a pair of bands also considered Velvet Undergrounds of their respective mini-eras, each of which took a decade off from active duty before improbably reforming. It's also, arguably, a better-planned relaunch than either of the previous indie-rock greats to attempt similar comebacks. It's an encouraging comeback story for what has been called the best American rock band of the late '90s and early '00s. The new album debuts to first-week sales of 28,000, which in one week is already more than one quarter of the way to the total sales of each of their last four albums. 80 prior to Cities, that was S-K's only title to make the album chart's upper half, let alone the top 20. Their last disc before a decade-long hiatus, 2005's The Woods, debuted and peaked at a modest No. That is easily the highest berth ever achieved by a Sleater-Kinney album.
No Cities to Love, the critically adored new album by the trio of Carrie Brownstein, Corin Tucker and Janet Weiss, arrived on last week's Billboard 200 album chart all the way up at No. Not just with critics and fans, but possibly also with people who've never bought a Sleater-Kinney album before.
One thing you can say for the improbable return of Olympia punk deities Sleater-Kinney: By the standards of a Greatest Indie Rock Band of Their Generation, it's off to a rousing start. Frank Black (right) and Joey Santiago of the Pixies perform at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in 2004, the year the band reunited after more than a decade apart.
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