This year marks the 30th Anniversary of Bossanova, Pixies third studio album. Having so successfully helmed their platinum-selling second album Doolittle, the band continued to work with Gil Norton, this time choosing to record in Los Angeles over their native Boston (“Blown Away”, however, was recorded during a European tour in 1989 at the Hansa Tonstudio in Berlin). Their third album in as many years, it was a particularly fertile time for the band with Kim Deal also starting to have success with The Breeders, who released their debut album Pod just a few months prior. Featuring the singles “Allison” (a tribute to jazz and blues pianist Mose Allison), “Dig For Fire” and “Velouria”, plus the first cover to feature on one of their albums (“Cecilia Ann”, originally by The Surftones), Bossanova showed a new, less primal side to the band, with surf and space rock now more prevalent. Lyrically too, Black Francis is even more cryptic with a recurring sci-fi theme throughout, which in turn influenced Vaughan Oliver’s classic planet design for the sleeve.

To mark its third decade, 4AD are reissuing the album as a limited pressing on red vinyl with the original 16-page booklet being reinserted, having previously only been available in the UK with the initial pressing of the LP back in 1990.

• 1 Cecilia Ann
• 2 Rock Music
• 3 Velouria
• 4 Allison
• 5 Is She Weird
• 6 Ana
• 7 All Over the World
• 8 Dig for Fire
• 9 Down to the Well
• 10 The Happening
• 11 Blown Away
• 12 Hang Wire
• 13 Stormy Weather
• 14 Havalina