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Ten Percenter
- FB Enquirer -
United Kingdom
1733 Posts |
 Posted - 08/29/2005 : 06:36:14
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Don't think this has been posted yet, By Jennifer Kelly:
http://www.splendidmagazine.com/review.html?reviewid=1123495761408573
The Pixies were always a mercurial band, as much about fragmented surfaces, wordplay and jarring juxtapositions as anything. Surreal and distancing and mocking, they never grabbed you by the heart; they were after your brain, first and foremost. It was only later, with Catholics records like Dog in the Sand and Show Me Your Tears, that Frank Black showed the blood under the skin. That's why it's odd that, on the eve of his epochal Pixies reunion tour and after firing his criminally underrated Catholics, Black took it on himself to make a southern soul record, a genre that's all heart and soul and muscle. It's not a natural fit, and despite the starry array of session men, Black doesn't quite carry it off. His take on "Dark End of the Street", for instance, is far more arm's length, smoother and less impassioned, than the James Carr original, though Black's falsetto is undeniably impressive. Even so, Honeycomb radiates a slow-building warmth, stoked by subtly excellent musicianship and quiet, self-contained songwriting.
Honeycomb's musical credits read like a who's who of southern soul music. Dan Penn, who recorded the album, has produced Aretha Franklin, Solomon Burke and the Box Tops. Steve Cropper of Booker T & the MGs co-wrote "Green Onions", "Sitting on the Dock of the Bay" and "In the Midnight Hour". Pianist Spooner Oldham can be found on any number of Stax classics, and Anton Fig, in addition to being David Letterman's house drummer, has worked with Dylan. Yet, however impressive their credentials, they're basically all session men, hired to stay in the background. The music, as a result, is restrained but excellent, every note perfect and minimal and in the service of the songs. There are very few solos, very few prolonged instrumental breaks. You have to pay attention to catch the deep blue guitars and rolling piano lines on "Another Velvet Nightmare", but they are there and absolutely right.
The songs, too, seem well constructed, but a little shy, afraid to make the dynamic leaps and transitions that have characterized Black's solo and Pixies work. "Selkie Bride", which opens the disc, begins with a long series of fluid, mysterious piano chords, then turns into a Western-style folk song. It is, like the rest of the album, about love and loss and betrayal. It ends abruptly as the Selkie, like the song, melts away, and is followed by the shuffling "I Burn Today", which again pits harsh lyrics against a buoyant swing melody. "Lone Child" is darker, musically, Black's upper register voice fluttering over bass-driven rhythms and glimmering Rhodes. In all these songs, blues guitar -- probably Cropper -- emerges intermittently from the background, smolders too briefly and disappears again. The fourth of this very strong series of original songs is "Another Velvet Nightmare", co-written with Reid Paley, and bearing his bile-spitting, raucously humorous brand. Here, lodged in the slow spaces between verse and chorus, the guitar and piano are allowed to run a little, lodging slanting notes like darts in this great beast of a bar-room lament.
Black slips in a few covers mid-album, including Dan Penn and Chips Moman's "Dark End of the Street", Doug Sahm's "Sunday Sunny Mill Valley Groove Day", and "Song of the Shrimp", written by Roy Bennett and Sid Tepper and popularized by Elvis Presley. These songs definitely lend flavor and texture to Honeycomb, rooting it in the Muscle Shoals sound that has, until that point, only been hinted at. The guitar solo on "Dark End" is one of the album's best, the kind of thing that makes you close your eyes and nod along. Still, songs like these have memories. You can't hear the chorus without wanting it a little rougher and a little more from the gut, but Black remains aloof and distant.
After an ill-advised duet with Black's ex in "Strange Goodbye", the album settles again into the kind of bittersweet, rootsy original songs that Black and his Catholics have favored. He's at home here, singing about loneliness and betrayal in a detached way, as if they didn't matter to him, personally, not at all. The part of "My Life Is In Storage" that will make you cry is the instrumental break, not the words, though the words are sad in themselves. The album closes with the relatively upbeat "Sing for Joy", about a certain alcoholic Georgy Porgy who "last winter got it together / happiness came with the warm weather." He seems to get caught in a murder suicide but comes out in a buoyant chorus of "Sing for joy / sing for laughs." There's something beautiful about this chorus wafting out of another deeply pessimistic album, the blues accompaniment turning to gospel and the sky clearing. Honeycomb isn't a great album -- it's too tentative and self-restrained for that -- but it's quite a good one.
-- Jennifer Kelly
"Fried food, cigarettes, no exercise, chest pain..." (Excerpt from the Angina Monologues) |
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Honeycomb review - Splendid magazine
The Cult of Frank : You can do it, We can help.. 