Frank Black C or D?

Subquestion: is liking Frank Black 'hipster'?

But as a solo artist overall, I vote DUD.

Once again, his first album is great and what I've heard of Teenager of the Year is annoying. 'Dog in the Sand' and 'Bullet' were pretty good on his last (?) album.

Live, he's brilliant. Frank Black is a rock god, hands down.

Show Me Your Tears if a fine, diverse cd. Totally different than his Pixies stuff, but great nonetheless. CLASSIC!

That's ridiculously unfair. Da Vinci wasn't in a band, much less in a band with the likes of Kim Deal and Joey Santiago. I'm very glad Frank's made friends with Joey again, albeit in a "will you be insignificant on my new album? I'll pay you!" kind of way.

But Frank Black is classic no matter what. Do this: make a mix which follows "Warm California Sun" by The Rivieras with "Two Spaces" by Frank Black. Then you may begin to understand the sensibility and the kitschy-yet-soulful genius at work here.

He writes about things that no one in rock (that i know of, at least) writes about. And I think that's cool. Discussions of history and science are big with him.

Like one of my favorite things about some of his recent music are his songs that, essentially, teach history. The trials of the American Indians at the hands of the early settlers seems to be a topic he's into. Like the song "Humboldt County Massacre" is a two minute punk rock song with lyrics that go into encyclopedic detail about the slaughter a particular tribe. "Chip Away Boy" is another ("Chip Away Boy" = Chippewa Boy). "St. Francis Dam Disaster" is another historical song. "Llano del Rio".

And he sometimes puts word games into his lyrics that can be fun to discover. If you like the song "Robert Onion" off Dog in the Sand, check out the first letter of each line of the song. They form an acrostic that clues you in to the song's inspiration.

Frank Black‘s second solo album, Teenager of the Year, turned 30 this year, and to celebrate 4AD is giving it a new reissue, and Frank will be playing it live, in full, on tour in early 2025.

Says Frank: “Sometime in the early 80s, I’d have to look up the date, I matriculated high school. This school held an awards banquet for some of the departing students at the school. I received an award called the TEENAGER OF THE YEAR award; my brother received the same award the following year. Our award was a 50 dollar credit for textbooks, a TEENAGER OF THE YEAR medallion (my mother still has this), and also the banquet hall dinner, soup to nuts. My brother and I had no complaint about the award (it was given for being all-around-good-guy as best as we could determine). But for such a grand title to be given as TEENAGER OF THE YEAR, I felt the glory had not been amplified enough. In 1993, I was doing ‘solo recording’ sessions with Eric Drew Feldman in Los Angeles.We had settled on a core band with Nick Vincent and Lyle Workman, occasionally augmented by Joey Santiago and Moris Tepper. Though we had to change studios numerous times for actual forest fires and earthquakes, the whole process was such an addictive musical buffet that Eric and I couldn’t stop. We did some vocals at a studio rumored to be owned by Sergio Mendes; in the control room was a wall of television screens broadcasting the brush fire which crept toward us. We eventually evacuated to someplace else. We never met Sergio but we saw him perform a few weeks later when we vacated to Las Vegas after the Northridge earthquake, which had trapped the TEENAGER OF THE YEAR tapes in a studio vault for some time. Our zeal plus empathy from our financiers, they safely observing our travails from London, was enough to keep the money flowing until Eric and I relented and declared ‘Consummatum est.’ We tried to make it grand. 22 in 62. I called it TEENAGER OF THE YEAR. It is 30 years old now, and the original band will perform the record at various venues in early 2025. 4AD has remastered the LP for a fresh printing. Enjoy.”

The tour happens in January and February, and reunites most of the players on that album, including Eric Drew Feldman, Lyle Workman and Nick Vincent.

Frank Black – 2025 Teenager Of The Year Tour Dates:

January

15th San Francisco, CA The Fillmore
16th San Francisco, CA The Fillmore
18th LA, CA The Orpheum
19th El Cajon, CA The Magnolia
22nd Denver, CO The Paramount
24th Minneapolis, MN TBA
25th Chicago, IL The Metro
26th Chicago, IL The Metro
28th Detroit, MI St Andrews Hall
29th Toronto, ON History
31st Boston, MA Citizens House Of Blues

February

01st Brooklyn, NY Brooklyn Steel
04th Paris, France Trianon
06th London, UK The Palladium

I was never interested in the Pixies reunion tours, but I want to see this. Cool that he got the original band together for it.

yeah, I might go to this? Haven't seen a Frank solo show since the 90s!

Oh hell yeah

kinda wish one of those shows was near me, Teenager of the Year is up there with Come On Pilgrim as one of my favorite things he's done.

Thalassocracy is still one of my all time fav starts to a song.

man i'm excited, love this album

I haven’t listened to this album in 18+ years but it was one of my favorites in high school and I must have listened to Calistan three hundred times…this is one of the nostalgia bids I might actually go for