Frank Black

Between 1986 and 1993, Charles Thompson IV, a.k.a. Black Francis, headed one of America's greatest alt-rock bands, the Pixies. In the music he's made since then, under the new handle Frank Black (get it?), you can still hear the stylistic features that distinguished his first group: wildly lurching melodies and chord progressions; sudden shifts of meter, tempo, and dynamics; guitar parts that run the gamut from surf sparkle to hardcore chug; and vocals that alternately coo and howl words covering every shade of peculiar. But as the Black catalogue stretches into the present, those features fade into the background. Clearly, Thompson has mellowed over time, becoming more sensible, more direct, and less interesting.

Coproduced by fellow oddball Eric Drew Feldman (Captain Beefheart, Pere Ubu), Black's self-titled debut remains his best album. Songs such as "Places Named After Numbers" and the near-epic "Parry the Wind High, Low" achieve a menacing kind of catchiness, while "I Heard Ramona Sing" features a typically left-field lyric: "I hope if someone retires/They pull another Menudo." A good chunk of Teenager of the Year's whopping 22 tracks sound underdeveloped, but there's enough top-shelf material ("Headache," "Pie in the Sky") to make it worthwhile.

From here the pickings get thinner. Black's next album, The Cult of Ray (now out of print), is a punk-metal disaster. His first disc with new band the Catholics goes for a live garage-rock vibe; the energy's great but the songs aren't memorable. Pistolero is a slight improvement, interspersing a few sterling tunes ("I Switched You," "So Hard to Make Things Out") among the filler.

On Dog in the Sand and its followers, Black regains some of his former juice, adding extra musicians, including Feldman, to the Catholics' basic rock quartet setup and exploring country, folk, and blues influences. They're all decent records -- Devil's Workshop is the standout -- and yet they still miss that lunatic spark of old. (MAC RANDALL)

From 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide