Frank Black Won't Quit

Despite Raider Man's formidable sonic departure from Black's Pixies material -- not to mention a much more straightforward lyrical style -- the singer confides that his unusual Pixies-era approach to songwriting has remained intact. "I definitely don't decide to write a song about any particular thing, ever. The whole Dada thing, I still do that. I sit down and try to make words rhyme and the subject comes from that," he says, likening the process as a series of linguistic games.

One minor exception is Raider Man's rhythm-and-blues-tinged ballad "My Terrible Ways," which Black says was inspired by a news story he saw on CNN in the Denver airport during the onset of Hurricane Katrina. "It was this poignant story about this inmate during the hurricane and what happened to him and his family. It was really heavy," he says. "I'm not the kind of songwriter who said, 'I got to get me one of those hurricane songs!' I didn't plan it, but I just heard his story like anybody else that day and I was in songwriting mood and I went in my hotel room at three in the morning. And that's that."

Fans still holding out for the Pixies to cut a new album may be disappointed. "I just recently tried to write some songs that I was hoping the Pixies were going to record, but it seems that they're not interested," he reveals. "It's really a tough challenge. People keep wanting you to re-do your big glorious moment. Sometimes I try to accommodate them. I think, 'OK, I'll give them "Monkey Gone to Heaven Two," but artistically once you do that, it starts to feel really icky really fast. It's cool because we're getting paid for work we did a long time ago, but it's not vital in the sense of creativity. The Pixies isn't that anymore. I wish it could be."