Frank Black
Honeycomb
Release Date: Jul 19, 2005
Genre(s): Indie, Rock
Record label: Back Porch / Cooking Vinyl
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Album Review: Honeycomb by Frank Black
Exceptionally Good, Based on 2 Critics
Based on rating 5/5
Just before the Pixies began their reunion tour in 2004, Frank Black holed up in Nashville, surrounded himself with legendary session musicians and recorded his first solo album for eight years. Guaranteed to confound those still wallowing in the glorious resurrection of the shrieking, screaming Black Francis, he's discovered a mellow maturity in Southern soul - and without losing his punk rock perversity or poetry. Against a wash of guitars, simple harmonies and keyboards, his voice glides from bitter-sweet on Selkie Bride to shiver-inducing on Dark End of the Street, accompanied by songwriters Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham.
Based on rating 7/10
Leave it to Frank Black to have his cake and eat it, too: by releasing Honeycomb, his Nashville-recorded collaboration with session legends including Steve Cropper, Anton Fig, and Spooner Oldham, while his reunion tour with the Pixies continued, he could follow his bliss and please his longtime fans. Those who thought Black's later work sounded like the output of a bad bar band probably won't get Honeycomb either, but at least the reunited Pixies should satisfy their longings to hear him shriek about surrealism and incest like he did in the good old days. On paper, Black might not seem like the likeliest fit with Cropper, Fig, et al.