Doolittle

After Surfer Rosa, the band recorded demos in a week at Eden Sound in Boston, and Norton arrived in mid-October 1988 for two weeks of pre-production. Sessions began on 31 October at Downtown Recorders, a 24-track studio, with a budget of $40,000, four times the cost of the debut. Principal recording ended on 23 November, and Steve Haigler mixed it from 28 November at Carriage House Studios in Stamford, Connecticut. The final mixes were done on 12 December.

Norton said that of about 23 songs or ideas the band started with, only three of the final 15 tracks run longer than three minutes. He advised Francis to slow down There Goes My Gun, which began as a faster, shorter Hüsker Dü-style song, and he gave Debaser an extended coda. Francis resisted adding verses and once took Norton to a record store to hand him a Buddy Holly greatest hits album. Santiago covered his Marshall amplifiers with blankets to protest the reverb Norton put on his guitar. Tension between Francis and Deal marked the sessions. Lovering sang La La Love You and said he had a lot of vodka first because he was nervous. Francis dropped a working title, Whore, because he feared people would take him for an anti-Catholic.

Two songs retell Old Testament stories: Dead is David and Bathsheba and Gouge Away is Samson and Delilah. Wave of Mutilation was based on newspaper reports of Japanese men who drove off a pier after failed business ventures, and Crackity Jones draws on Francis' month in Puerto Rico. The sleeve is by Simon Larbalestier and Vaughan Oliver, who this time had the lyrics, and pairs images such as a monkey and a halo.

Release and reception

Doolittle came out on 17 April 1989 in the UK and the next day in the US, after Elektra closed a deal with 4AD two weeks earlier. It reached number 8 in the UK. In the US it entered at 171 and later rose to 98, helped by college radio play of Monkey Gone to Heaven. It was certified gold in 1995 and platinum in 2018. NME's Edwin Pouncey wrote that the songs have the power to make you jump out of your skin. Melody Maker and Sounds named it album of the year, NME placed it fourth, and Rolling Stone and the Village Voice both put it tenth.

Pitchfork's 2014 essay called it their most famous album and contrasted Norton's lush, almost folksy sound with Albini's harsh live one. A Pitchfork survey in 2017 ranked it fourth among albums of the 1980s, and Rolling Stone placed it at number 141 in its 2020 list of the 500 greatest albums. Cobain said it was one of his favorite records. In 2014 4AD issued Doolittle 25, with B-sides, demos and two Peel sessions.