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Llamadance
> Teenager of the Year <
United Kingdom
2543 Posts |
 Posted - 07/15/2005 : 09:20:40
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I think this is due out tomorrow, judging by the date. Not the best, but favourable nonetheless. It gets 3/5. The one below is from today and gets 4/5. Both from The Times online, and do a search for Honeycomb.
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July 16, 2005
Frank Black,
Honeycomb
Honeycomb (Cooking Vinyl)
After the Pixies split up in 1993, their singer and chief songwriter, Black Francis, changed his name to the more prosaic Frank Black and embarked on a similarly workmanlike solo career. As albums rolled past, it seemed as if Black was one of those artists dependent on the peculiar chemistry of his first band: inspired with the Pixies, unremarkable without them.
The good news is that the band’s triumphant reunion in 2004 has provoked Black into making his finest solo album, though not the one that you might expect. Just before the Pixies’ tour began last summer, Black spent five days in Nashville recording tracks with a bunch of country-soul veterans — most notably Steve Cropper and Spooner Oldham — who had never heard of him. Unlike the screaming surrealist that he became with the Pixies, on Honeycomb Black is a rueful and understated divorcé, easing cautiously into middle-age.
There is a danger here that these fabulously laid-back musicians will run rings round the star-struck indie interloper. But apart from a weedy stab at Dan Penn and Chips Moman’s Dark End of the Street, Black acquits himself admirably. Clearly, while the Pixies might guarantee him a pension, this warm, wounded and thoughtful music is where Black’s heart lies now.
JM
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ROCK
FRANK BLACK
Honeycomb (Cooking Vinyl)
AS THE frontman of Pixies, Frank Black is a pop superhero. But as a solo act, he remains an underachieving Clark Kent, despite flexing the same songwriting muscles of steel. Honeycomb was recorded in Nashville, and sounds like it. Lovely but oddly skewed country laments, such as Another Velvet Nightmare, are given a punk twist: “Today I felt my heart slide down into my belly/ So I puked it up with liquor and I slept right where I lay.” An album to discover and cherish.
DAVID SINCLAIR
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No power in the 'verse can stop me
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Edited by - Llamadance on 07/15/2005 11:07:50 |
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Honeycomb reviews - The Times
