Ever wondered what the Pixies’ Wave of Mutilation would sound like if the Bee Gees covered it? No, me neither. Nor have I ever contemplated the thought of Prince, Tina Turner or Jimi Hendrix recording their own Pixies covers. It’s one of those things you just don’t think about.

Well, unless you’re the mysterious “Matthew”, in which case not only do you think about it, you sit down and record your own soundalike tribute to the Boston band.

By “soundalike tribute” I mean a tribute that sounds like other people, of course, as opposed to a tribute that sounds like the Pixies themselves; for that, we have to turn to Chris Morris, who in 1992 recorded a near-flawless Pixies pastiche called Motherbanger which was given away free with the late, lamented music magazine Select (and incidentally, I found the previous Pixies covers website at the blog of ex-Select scribe Graham Linehan — see, this is all connected; I’m not just blundering from one topic to another). The song (which pretty much nails the Pixies’ sound) identifies and lovingly parodies a multitude of the themes that recurred within their music, touching on Oedipal sex, Spanish lyrics and the quiet/loud dichotomy. You can thank TJ and Darrell from the internet’s premier Chris Morris-hating Chris Morris fansite, Cook’d and Bomb’d for the MP3 capture (which is of a much nicer quality than the one that’s circulated in the past).

There’s also Liam Lynch’s Fake Pixies Song (aka Colleen) which comes pretty close but — to my ears at least — doesn’t quite get the Pixies sound right in the same way as Motherbanger. Then again, Morris is no stranger to the soundalike song and his previous work is littered with them, although sadly in recent years he’s gone from well-observed parodies of mainstream acts to well-observed parodies of realtively obscure ones — not that there’s anything intrinsically less funny about doing so, but if you don’t know exactly who’s being parodied then you’re laughing at an archetype rather than the actual band, which renders the satire somewhat toothless.

Anyway, enjoy the music.