The Rockfeedback A-Z of Underrated Records: Frank Black - Teenager of the Year
By: Thomas Hannan
The Rockfeedback A-Z of Underrated Records is an ever expanding guide to albums, beloved by our writers if not the world at large, that we think you should know about. Records on the list are present in virtue of fulfilling a number of deliberately vague criteria. These can range from the LPs being unfairly slated at the time despite being fantastic, their being lost classics authored by underground artists that have failed to reach the audience they deserve, or true gems unjustly overshadowed by the huge commercial success of an artists' other work. It is our hope that the list will expand into being an exciting guide to collecting life changing music that might not feature in your usual 'The Greatest 100 Records You Must Listen to BEFORE YOU DIE' run downs, and that it will be enjoyed with all the enthusiasm and good natured humour with which it is intended.
I don't think Frank Black has made much bad music. I just think, especially over the last decade, he's made a lot of quite boring music. It's still going to have that voice on it, his unique little mannerisms. It's still worth listening to. It's just not worth getting that excited about any more. Because he's not excited about being Frank Black at the moment. In 1994, he loved being Frank Black - and it shows. That year's Teenager of the Year is an astounding record that is actually, arguably, far better than the last two Pixies albums.
Wait a doggone minute, better than the last two Pixies albums? That is indeed quite a statement, and one which I should clarify further. Initially, admittedly, it looks like a throwaway remark made by someone who acknowledges the historical importance of the early Pixies material but just, y'know, doesn't really care for all the surf and space stuff they got in to later on. Wrong. These are the words of a huge Pixies fan (I mean, really, who buys a Frank Black record unless they're already a massive Pixies obsessive anyway?). It's just that Frank's sophomore solo effort is so incredible that it trumps two of my favourite ever records - those last two Pixies ones, namely.
It wasn't easy to like Frank at this point in time ("what did you know Tom? You were 9!" - fair point, but bear with me, I've read some books n'shit). He'd sacked the rest of the Pixies by fax, made off with a fair bit of cash and in reversing his Pixies stage moniker Black Francis, went solo with an eponymous album that largely had everyone thinking leaving the Pixies was one huge mistake. But one glance at the cover, Frank's chubby, grinning face holding a bunch of flowers as if he's just won your heart and has the blooms as the reward, and you're back on side.
Don't be surprised however if Teenager of the Year takes an age to rise to the top of your most beloved records list. It took me ruddy ages. Things like 'Whatever Happened To Pong' and 'Thallasocracy', being so quick and coming so quickly after one another right as the record commences, it sounded a little throwaway. Yet this exuberance is exactly the golden ticket that Frank has struggled to rediscover ever since - the unique sound that is the sonic approximation of the sheer fun it is being Frank Black. There's also a metric f**k tonne of music to get through here - it can often be quite intimidating to turn over a record and fine out that there are 22 songs you need to learn to love. What's the best feeling in the world is realising that each one of them is a corker though. So I beg of you, stick with this one, as if you do, you've got a friend for life.
Lyrically, it might not be the fire and brimstone handjobs of the Pixies, but it's Frank at this best. 'I Want To Live On An Abstract Plain' is an escapist song that doesn't just dream of leaving the day job to sit on a beach - it dreams of shedding one's physical form and becoming purely ideas. F**k. If you want pure, physical rather than metaphysical escapism though, head to 'Space is Gonna Do Me Good', and marvel at the trumpets. It ranges the whole spectrum, from painfully considered to frantically dumb, and is great fun throughout. Frank has mastered the passion / precision debate here, and is, casually, awesome all the way through. Note that casually awesome and totally awesome are not mutually exclusive terms. On this record, they're very much interrelated. It's simultaneous ability to be bracingly tight and sarcastically off the cuff is one of its greatest strengths.
There are a few moments where ties with latter Pixies material are more obvious, such as the decision to retain former Magic Band member Eric Drew Feldman on keyboards and production duties (he played on the Pixies final LP Trompe Le Monde), and the solo on 'The Vanishing Spies' being pure Joey Santiago, because it's the self same former Pixies man playing guitar on it. Speak of Feldman, his sweepy space age synths might be his favourite tone, but I clap in his honour every time I hear the really endearingly, unproblematically dated nineties electric piano sounds on 'Fiddle Riddle' and 'Freedom Rock' too.
On Teenager of the Year, Frank Black learnt how to be a clever songwriter without necessarily being a reallyfuckingfast song writer. Sure, there's punk snot on here - a pair of songs full of gnashing teeth bookend the album brilliantly. But then there are tracks like 'Speedy Marie', at once one of the most relaxed and inventive things he's ever written. And the music needs to be lovely, because he's not screaming about incest any more, he's saying things like "Wise is the tongue, wet of perfect thought / And softest neck where always do I / Lay my clumsy thoughts / She is that most lovely art / Happy are my mind and my soul and my heart...". The underlying sound needs to be fucking gorgeous to carry a sentiment as brilliant as that. And my, it is.
It does signal the ensuing maturity of the man - the voice reaches that lovely warm timbre (especially on the smoothest of all these tracks, 'Sir Rockaby') the simultaneous authority and calming nature of which a youngster could never hope to emulate. He's also not afraid to leave the underground behind to mourn his loss either - on 'Ole Mullholand' and its intro especially, you can tell he's been to a U2 gig before. Thing is, he can't pull the stadium thing off for the whole song, and slips in to brilliant quirky croon within less than a minute, thereby brilliantly creating something mammothly chunky of his own to love. He aims for it again on 'White Noise Maker', but f**ks it up brilliantly and ends up sounding like latter period Devo instead.
An aside - the bit at the end of 'Ole Mulholland' where he's off on that monologue about the concrete of the aquaducts lasting as long as the pyramids of Egypt or the Parthenon of Athens is some of the best nonsense he's written to date. Ah, let's face it, his nonsense-writing days are over, more's the pity. He needed it. He got way too in to how nice his voice sounded when it was ageing and thought it could carry a whole album of mediocre songs. He was wrong. But with these astonishing silly-serious songs, it's the icing on a particularly scrumptious cake.
It's a record on which I have seventeen favourite songs, all jostling for top position. At the time of writing, 'Freedom Rock' (if only for this lyric - "they tried to give me advice down at the record shop, I said 'sit down boys, this may come as a SHOCK - all I listen to is freedom rock'") is right up there, locked in heated battle with 'The Hostess With The Mostess' and its manic time signature changes and inspirational rhythm guitar work and 'Superabound's way of making me feel great about having nothing to do because Frank claims he's got nothing to do either and by the sounds of this record he is definitely my mate. Did I mention his best single's on it too? 'Headache' should be requested a lot more indie discos than it is (recent statistics published revealed it was requested a total of no times at all in the last six months in the greater London area alone).
As he sings in 'Freedom Rock', "nobody owns the pleasure of tones that belongs to the guy with no ears". I don't reckon someone who doesn't own the pleasure of tones supplied by Teenager of the Year is getting as much pleasure out of life as they could, either.