frank black solo: S and D

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?

Teenager >>> FB.

"Pong" is on of my fave songs of his, and there are so many gems tucked away on that album. I was done after Cult of Ray, which wasn't bad even though the cover was incredibly hideous.

Cult of Ray is so much a part of the fabric of mid '90s college newspaper record reviews. I remember seeing a copy around the newsroom.

I had a 6 x 4 foot Teenager of the Year poster in my teenage bedroom

Literally never heard anyone compare Black to Mark Knopfler (in the Qietus article), is this pointing to a probable/possible influence or just supposed to be unflattering?