Teenager Of The Year [CD]

Stand-out tracks are Headache & White-noise maker, but all the tracks add something to the feel of the album.

There's not many artists that put 22 tracks on an album without having a few fillers, fortunately Frank Black is an exception. All 22 tracks are fantastic.

If you like great music this is definetely an album worth adding to your collection

For all the good things that can be said about the first (eponymous) solo album, it certainly invited those unfavourable comparisons by sticking too closely to the Pixies formula. Teenager of the Year, on the other hand, sounds happy to be flabby and uncool. He seems to have relaxed, forgotten about the Pixies, and just doing what he wants to do.

Consequently, there is a treacherous MOR quality to the record, and one can't help lamenting what he might have done with the same material had he recorded it five years previously. That said, the songs are some of his most accomplished ever: fun, writerly and irresistibly melodic.

The subject matter is as scattergun and predictable as ever-- UFOs, the joys of music, Pong, sci-fi television-- but it's nice to see the inclusion of a couple of mature yet idiosyncratic love songs. 'Sir Rockaby' will make you cry with a stupid smile on your face.

Seven years after its release, I cannot stop myself from bursting into song along with this record, and that's its real power. It's a sprawling songbook of utterly unique, goofball vignettes, stuffed full of inventiveness and performed with a straight face. Who else could rhyme 'potlach,' 'sasquatch' and 'mismatch' in three successive lines? And who hasn't heard this album without reaching for the dictionary?

All his classic vocal personae are out in force too. He shifts from his Ramones snarl ('Thallassocracy') to his plaintive Neil Young impression ('(I Want to Live on an) Abstract Plain') within the first five minutes. It's this constant change in vocal gear that supplies the emotional element missing from the songs themselves.

If there's a problem, it's in length. Judicious editing of the song-list from 22 to somewhere nearer 15 might make it a sharper, more satisfying experience. But then where do you cut? He wrote this album on a creative roll, and everybody I know would argue the toss for different songs. Which, I suppose, only goes to show the quality of the quantity.

Sadly, despite the occasional song to hit the mark, he's never bettered this album. But I know I'll be singing these songs for the rest of my life, and for a tenner, that seems like a real bargain.