frank black solo: S and D

Destroy
Everything else since 2001 bar "Selkie Bride" and "Manitoba"

"i'm a JERK!"

suckin' syzzzzurp and soda youre gonna jus get hotter~!@

d: everything else has left me really bored, but to be frank (oh!) i've never really listened closely.

this is kinda the music corollory of 'all politics is local.'

god just the ugliest cover art on the planet with this guy constantly

The "rock songs" version of The Golem is pretty good! First time I've been excited about a Frank Black/Black Francis thing since Dog in the Sand.

yeah I'm really digging this. love "Miriam and Florian" and "bad news".
this is my favorite thing he's done in awhile.

Those are nice, yeah. I don't dislike any of the songs on here, but I think my favorite run is Astaroth->The Obedient Servant->The Maharal.

haven't heard golem, but his bluefinger album from a year or two ago was surprisingly strong.
still listen to the first 3 solo albms a lot.

"Threshold Apprehension" from bluefinger came on the other day in a mix, and I was thinking Mclusky? Beastie Boys? I had a FB sense about it, and was happy it was him. Great song. It made me more inclined to comb through his later releases.

i used to like that one - getting old is a bitch - bluefinger is his most pixies-like thing i reckon

search: cult of ray (gem, and oft overlooked critically)

― Charlie Howard (the sphinx), Tuesday, October 3, 2006 2:15 PM

Thankyou, I'm very saddened by how many think it's a bad album (just confirmed by looking at reviews), I think it's brilliant and essential but just not quite as good as the previous two. But you need it!

Also sad: no mentions in the recent early 90s polls and surprisingly short threads here. I've got 14 of his albums, if I had to recommend some after the first 3, it would be Dog In The Sand, I find most everything else a mixed bag. Pistolero has some fun, the first Catholics album is great in the first half.
As much as I'm eager to boost/defend some of his stuff, I'm not that interested in hearing the newer albums, whether solo, Grand Duchy of even new Pixies. Maybe some years down the line. But I will be getting Oddballs soon, wanted to hear that for years.

Got Black Session recently (French live show from 94) and it just seems okay so far, will give it a few more spins. But there's lots of lyrics I never noticed before, this inspired me to read the lyrics for some early songs and they are amusingly incomprehensible (particularly "Thalassocracy").

Genuinely surprised by the dislike for "I Don't Want To Hurt You (Every Single Time)", I think it's lovely.

"Out of State" on Devil's Workshop is one of his better later-ish songs.

Finished listening to Oddballs. Quite good, but made very worthwhile for "At The End Of The World", "Annoucement" and "Jumping Beans". The latter is a lot of fun and I love the wonky guitars in it.

Tempted to get more of his stuff because I miss him but I've got 14 of his albums and most of them are just sort of okay and the new Pixies stuff I've heard sounds just okay too. The first three solo albums are the only ones I recommend without hesitation but I'm fond of some of the others. I'm perplexed by the shortness of this thread. There always seemed to be plenty of his stuff in shops but maybe he did better in Britain?

I love Eric Drew Feldman on the early albums (and Trompe Le Monde) and always wondered if any other bands really showed him off. I got the first Knife+Fork album and liked it.

London and Paris shows and the remastered album, some notes about the album here and he really did win a teenager of the year award.
https://blackfranc.is/news/frank-black-announces-teenager-of-the-year-2025-shows/

article from 2014 I never saw
https://thequietus.com/opinion-and-essays/anniversary/frank-black-teenager-of-the-year-review/

Great record — the first two Frank Black records are as good as any Pixies record.

:/

It's hard to say, I often think Doolittle is the best thing but I love Bossanova, Frank Black (debut) and Teenager Of The Year so much more. The debut is more solid overall but Teenager Of The Year is just so energetic, varied and stuffed with so much goodness (despite trailing off at the end like Bossanova)

Delving into more of the b-sides, "Surf Epic" (an instrumental) is one of the better finds, the first segment was later refashioned into "Dog In The Sand" from the album of the same name (probably the best Catholics era album)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBQ7ITSVVqs

Listening to Teenager Of The Year for the first time is one of my happiest music memories. Wish he had made more music with Feldman.

It was a big formative influence on my tastes for sure, more than anything by the Pixies, and it’s still one of my favorite albums. Really hope they add some US tour dates.

Great record — the first two Frank Black records are as good as any Pixies record.

― tylerw, Saturday, June 15, 2024 9:25 PM

Better.

ha, not sure if I'd go that far, but I do really love the early FB stuff. When I was a teenager myself, I saw the Teenager of the Year band in very small clubs in the LA area circa 1994 and those were incredible shows.

To be clear: FB's a better realized album than TLM, which plays these days like a rough draft of FB; and a better album than Bossanova.

i kind of like the big sprawl of Teenager – feels fitting since its subject (or at least one of them) seems to be the sprawl of Los Angeles ... To my mind, Frank is one of the few songwriters who looked at LA as a whole, as opposed to just the well-traveled areas ... how many people were writing about the Del Amo Mall or William Mulholland?