Frank Black: Frank Black

FRANK BLACK: FRANK BLACK (1993)

1) Los Angeles; 2) I Heard Ramona Sing; 3) Hang On To Your Ego; 4) Fu Manchu; 5) Places Named After Numbers; 6) Czar; 7) Old Black Dawning; 8) Ten Percenter; 9) Brackish Boy; 10) Two Spaces; 11) Tossed; 12) Parry The Wind High, Low; 13) Adda Lee; 14) Every Time I Go Around Here; 15) Donʼt Ya Rile ʼEm.

General verdict: A «return to roots» of sort for the twisted alien mind of a former Pixie, but without forgetting the twisted alien mind.

It may seem bizarre or controversial, but I actually enjoy Frank Blackʼs self-titled solo debut slightly more than I feel for Trompe Le Monde — albeit only slightly, since something about Frankʼs individual vision had blocked his solo career right from the start from ever overtaking the high points of Pixies. Nevertheless, there is that cherished feel of liberation and a new beginning about this record, the same one that used to characterize the first records by solo Beatles and make them outstanding in their own ways. It is pure intuition, of course, but somehow Trompe Le Monde, to me, has the feel of an album they were forcing themselves to make, whereas Frank Black is very clearly an album that Frank Black wanted to make. Though, admittedly, why he wanted to make this kind of album is an issue yet to be resolved.

From a purely musical standpoint, this is actually a very «normal» record. Despite the important presence of Joey Santiago to handle lead guitar duties, there is no attempt to somehow channel the experimental spirit of classic Pixies — for the most part, Frank writes his solo material in a fairly conventional manner, and his main musical influences seem to be the Beatles and the Ramones rather than Talking Heads or Pere Ubu or Captain Beefheart, even despite the fact that his bass and keyboard player, as well as producer, Eric Drew Feldman, had previously worked for both Pere Ubu and the good Captain. But «conventional» need not mean «predictable» or «boring»: most of the songs are made interesting, one way or another, by being injected with healthy doses of Frankʼs uniquely weird personality.

The very first song is ʽLos Angelesʼ, whose complex structure, for some reason, reminds me of Radioheadʼs ʽParanoid Androidʼ — a similar mix of folk, psychedelia, and hard rock (well, straightforward grunge in Frankʼs case) imbued with an aura of I-donʼt-belong-here sadness, though Frank Black would never agree to wear his heart so openly on his sleeve as Thom Yorke does: for Frank, being too vulnerable comes across as either a sign of weakness or a sign of narcissism (choose one based on your own ideological alignment). Of course, ʽLos Angelesʼ is nowhere near as epic or compositionally rich as ʽParanoid Androidʼ, but I still love its crazy shifts of tone and tempo, its hilarious forays into old-school prog-rock territory when those synth fanfares roll out on the battlefield around 1:25 into the song, or its back-of-your-mind falsetto vocals from the classic book of psychedelic pop. What is the song about? Well, he wants to live in Los Angeles, but «not the one in Los Angeles». I mean, honestly — who wouldnʼt?

Even before hearing the album, you would probably be able to predict what it is going to be about: namely, building an alternate variant of the universe for the artistic alter ego of Charles Thompson IV, formerly known under the sinister moniker of Black Francis but now simply Frank Black, ever since he managed to disentangle himself from the Dark Side. There will be songs about aliens, time travel, oceans, and ghosts; there will be songs about strange and possibly quite meaningless things; and there will even be an uptempo, almost «techno» cover of the original version of the Beach Boysʼ ʽI Know Thereʼs An Answerʼ — ʽHang On To Your Egoʼ (which, not coincidentally, had only recently been released for the first time on CD, so we could probably tell Frank is a major Pet Sounds fan from this fact alone). Well, I guess one thing we could never accuse Frank Black of is not hanging on to his ego.

That said, if there is one single thread running through all or most of the songs on here, it is not Frankʼs ego as such but rather all the things that Frank loves — tons of lyrical and musical references to all sorts of pop culture elements, some of which would take a genuine connoisseur to notice, while others are more obvious. For instance, besides the Beatles and the Beach Boys, Frank obviously loves the Ramones, and so he decided to write a song about them, changing ʽRamonesʼ to ʽRamonaʼ so that things wouldnʼt be that obvious and youʼd be misled into thinking that maybe it has something to do with Dylanʼs ʽTo Ramonaʼ instead. Never mind that ʽI Heard Ramona Singʼ is played at about one-third the speed of a usual Ramona, uh, Ramones song: just speed it up and you get yourself a modestly catchy pop-rock anthem filled with giddy teen adoration. I am not sure if Frankʼs "I hope if someone retires / They pull another Menudo" bit of advice is really practical — after all, the Ramones did outlive themselves by 1993, not to mention historyʼs cruel irony of all the original members dying before they got really old — but if taken as a simple allegory for eternal youth, itʼs nothing to complain about.

Oddly enough, one of my favorite pieces on the album is the only song not to feature any vocals at all: ʽTossedʼ is a kick-ass piece of steady 4/4 power pop, with big strong muscular basslines, drum rhythms, and guitar interplay — its best moment, however, is when the rhythm is joined by equally muscular sax parts which carry a Beach Boys-like spirit and somehow give the entire workout that special sunny Californian flair. This kind of material would be particularly appealing to all those who love Brian Wilsonʼs pop hooks and melodicity but deplore their lack of kick-ass rock energy — of course, Frank Black is not Brian Wilson, and his melody skills are nowhere near the same league, but he has that great knack for marrying crunch and melody, and it is good to see that this is one thing that he hasnʼt lost one bit after divorcing the band.

Another of Frankʼs clear connections is David Bowie — ʽFu Manchuʼ, with its glam-rock brass arrangement, epic-soulful vocals, and half-mystical, half-comical pathos, sounds like something that would have nicely fit in on an album like Diamond Dogs. The big difference is the voice: it might be an American vs. British thing or it might just have to do with an innate discrepancy between vocal timbres, but Frank always struggles when it comes to convincingly represent an unknowable being from outer space. (One reason why ʽCactusʼ, in some ways, actually became a better song when David covered it on Heathen — I sure wish heʼd developed an interest in ʽFu Manchuʼ as well). On the other hand, Blackʼs preference for more simplistic, poppy, ska-like rhythmics of the ʽOb-La-Di Ob-La-Daʼ type gives his own brand of alien comic-book mysticism this childlike charm that makes him particularly endearing where a David Bowie might come across as way too alienated and impenetrable. To each his own.

Like most Frank Black albums, this one works better as a whole than on the level of individual songs — thereʼs just too many of those, and it is difficult to pick truly outstanding hooks and unforgettable highlights because, for one thing, Blackʼs arrangements and chord patterns do not show that much diversity, and even his cute brass flourishes start becoming predictable after a while. But there are still enough quirks to make the album flow by without getting boring, and he manages to sign off on a suitably high and grandiose note — ʽDonʼt Ya Rile ʼEmʼ, a song about the advantages of natural light over electricity (sort of), really manages to tie its melody to lyrics like "Iʼve been working my way back to sane / Itʼs coming back to me again / Old navigational ways / Back in time where I belong / Theyʼre playing my favorite song". Adepts of constant progress might flinch at this scrap of a nostalgic manifesto, but the truth about Frank Black is that it merely takes a small step away from the eccentric excesses of classic Pixies, and its «normalization» of the Frank Black sound, along with all the artistic bows to his influences, does not prevent the music from expressing the Frank Black persona. Which is just the way some people like it — myself included.