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Ten Percenter
- FB Enquirer -
United Kingdom
1733 Posts |
 Posted - 12/12/2003 : 04:47:54
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A review by Doug Brown, no rating, apologies if it has already been posted:
SHOW ME YOUR TEARS
Frank Black and the Catholics
Cooking Vinyl
In between bouts of teasing us about getting The Pixies back together for another tour, Frank Black (a.k.a. Black Francis, a.k.a. Charles Michael Kitteridge Thompson IV) is keeping himself good and busy with The Catholics. And goddammit if they haven't just put out one of the best albums of the year. Show Me Your Tears is everything you want and expect from the crown prince of what used to be called "alternative", until the misappropriation of the word by the thieving capitalist music industry bastards.
Of course Black is grown up and balding and takes his holidays in rural France now so the album isn't quite as raw and youthful-sounding as some of his earlier output. You can even make out most of the lyrics. But he's right on top of his game and has filled Show Me Your Tears with a magnificent selection of rock'n'roll The Way It Ought To Be. Guitars reverbing and wailing, drums clattering about and Black booming and growling about loneliness, visions of god, failed relationships, naked women and getting drunk on Chateuneuf du Pape.
So, as he's become a wine expert, let's raise the glass of Show Me Your Tears to our noses in an Alan Partridge-style desperate extended metaphor and see what we can discern in the bouquet… Well there's a hint of Exile-era Rolling Stones, a whoosh of Johnny Cash, a smidgen of Neil Young, unsurprisingly a cheeky morsel of Pixies and a healthy dollop of Tom Waits. That's not to say Black's derivative - rather that he deserves his own place in this pantheon because this album is terrifically original. Can you think of anyone else who'd put on one album a tribute to Jainism (Jaina Blues), a lustsong to a goth (Nadine, the arresting opening track) and a panegyric to an eminent French wine (New House Of The Pope)?
The music itself is perfectly executed alt-country-rock-blues-punkiness (if we have to categorise it) and there aren't many surprises in the format of the songs: fairly standard verse/chorus arrangements and classic Black A/B/B/A rhyme schemes and the like. But who expects ground-breaking experimental noodling? He knows his trade inside out and isn't about to start tampering with the flawless. But I suppose I mean that everything sounds vaguely like something else. However, every track is a gem of poetry and the tunes are disarmingly catchy.
All the songs are meditative and laced with humour and sadness. One of the most striking is Horrible Day, a toe-tapping sing-along about depression. In Massif Centrale Black sings about taking a reclusive break in France. He witters on in a comedy falsetto about lutes, but doesn't seem to find what he's looking for up in the hills. There are acrimonious break-ups on the album - in Goodbye Lorraine he leaves a happy woman because he's too bitter: "She said if we'll be witches/then there must be nakedness/I said you have no heart until/that aching fills your chest". And in When Will Happiness Find Me Again he's the one getting dumped: "She picked up the phone/The bombs were deployed".
I could pick great lyrics from every song but of course you'd still have to hear the music to understand how great the album is. Which is why I can't commend it to you strongly enough. The only negative is that at just over 40 minutes, Show Me Your Tears will leave you craving more of this relentless, aching, sultry blues.
No man is an island, unless he is in the bath |
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"Join the Cult of Frank / And you'll be enlightened"