release date: Mar. 8, 1993
format: digital
[album rate: 3 / 5] [3,18]
producer: Eric Drew Feldman, Frank Black
label: 4AD Records - nationality: USA
Track highlights: 1. "Los Angeles" - 2. "I Heard Ramona Sing" - 3. "Hang on to Your Ego" - 8. "Ten Percenter" - 13. "Adda Lee" - 15. "Don't Ya Rile 'Em"
Studio album solo debut by Frank Black, aka Black Francis, which used to be his moniker while band leader of Pixies, aka Charles Michael Kittridge Thompson IV [actual birth name!] released only a few months after Black had announced the break-up of Pixies, which apparently had come as a surprise to the other members of the band. Musically, it follows close in the tradition of Pixies' material and also as a follow-up to its last album Trompe le monde (1991). Joey Santiago of Pixies feature on additional guitar, and Black's two foremost musical associates here are co-producer Eric Drew Feldman (former Pere Ubu and Captain Beefheart) on bass and keyboards and with Nick Vincent on drums and percussion.
I recall listening to the album by chance in the early 90s finding it superficial and of no particular interest. I think, I had been taken so much by surprise by the split of a great band and also found the band's last album of less interest - at the time - that I simply rejected this, thinking the band had been great with Doolittle and not really again after that. A few years later I changed by view on Pixies last album but never found this one in close relation to that. It's obvious that it's rather close to the soul of the band, but I don't find this one particular successful, and have come to regard it as Black's urge to show the others how he was somewhere else - already releasing his own material as if to say: "Pixies is all over with - just look where I'm heading!" - or something.
It does for sure seem unfinished - like an album in the making, and I have always regarded it as something just above the mediocre... for some reason.'Cause when I compare it to the last two albums by Pixies it's really not far from those - not considerably poorer. I think, it's major problem is that it almost only summarizes what Pixies stood for. Too many compositions stand so close to what has already been issued by his former band - here new songs have their own specific arrangements. That's true, but they still sound like remakes, and that's the problem about this album. Black doesn't do something else than going through the motions - just for himself this time. Perhaps it's actual problem is that it's his break-up album where he just wants something to shove in the face of his former associates saying "We used to do this together, now I do it on my own (and we all know it's the same shite)".
I'm not overly pleased about it, though I can't really say it's near bad. I just don't play it often and can only say that I do not agree with Heather Phares at allmusic.com.
[ allmusic.com 4,5 / 5, Rolling Stone 4 / 5 stars ]
