Tried-and-true Frank Black visits town
Frank Black's (a.k.a. Black Francis) strong personality and need for artistic control broke him away from the Pixies to begin a solo career. In the three solo albums he has released since then, the only common element has been the strong infusion of Black's personality into his music.
When Black visited a sold-out Urban Art Bar last Saturday, it was with a fresh set of songs culled from his latest album, The Cult of Ray . But Black made sure to mix in a lot of material from his 1993 self-titled release and especially 1994's prolific Teenager of the Year .
Perhaps as a response to critics' complaints that Teenager of the Year 's 22 songs were too sprawling to pack a consistent punch, Black left the synthesizers at home and came to Houston at the head of a tight four-piece guitar band. New labelmate Jonny Polonsky was in tow and delivered a strong opening performance, while local opener Secret Sunday showed flashes of inspiration after a rocky start. Both of these newcomers may well move up in their respective circles.
"The Marsist" kicked off Black's set just as it begins The Cult of Ray 's 13 tracks. But while the album continues with similar pieces of power-pop narrative, at the UAB, Black immediately digressed into an ambitious run sprinkled with older gems such as "Freedom Rock," "Los Angeles" and "Adda Lee." The 25-song set was long but never suffered from a lack of continuity. On the contrary, it was exactly what Black's fans probably expected after three years without a tour.
"You Ain't Me" and "Dance War" from The Cult of Ray evidenced Black's return to his punk-pop roots. Both feature hard-driving melodies; drummer Scott Boutier pushed the backbeats hard on "Dance War," while octave-scaling guitar flashes alternated the song's power chord-based core.
"You Ain't Me" was already a crowd favorite, but it was the wild one-two combo of "What- ever Happened to Pong?" and "Thalassocracy" from Teenager that tested the band's chops and frenzied the crowd more than anything. Black's lyrics to "Pong" were unintelligible; of course, one can question whether phrases like "Paddle the paddle the side to the side" need to be (or can ever be) well understood anyway.
With Black's re-energized rock 'n' roll ethic, slower songs didn't work as well; the band adjusted for tempo but not for volume, and a somewhat grating bluesy aura clamped onto songs where it didn't seem to belong.
But on the whole, the band was very solid; very few others have ever written 25 songs this satisfying over just a four-year period. The Cult of Ray , which for the most part was recorded live (in studio), captures much of the concert's energy in numbers like the rockabilly "Mosh, Don't Pass the Guy." It progresses, like Black's earlier records, as a montage of character sketches drawn in hard-driving rock 'n' roll. "Jesus was Right" deals with teen isolation, and "Creature Crawling" uses a slithery guitar riff and anxiety-pressed singing by Black to portray an oncoming monster.
The Cult of Ray 's thematic focus, first established in "The Marsist," reappears throughout the album and is finally summarized in "The Cult of Ray" (a song whose title refers to Ray Bradbury).
If Black's concert at the UAB was tailor-made for his already devoted fans, The Cult of Ray manages to be accessible, enjoyable and, as Black says, more "pure Frank" than ever. But it doesn't astound like Teenager of the Year . Cynics will have to settle for an album that is only very good.
This item appeared in the Arts & Entertainment section of the March 1, 1996 issue.
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