Teenager Of The Year

The least we can say is that Black Francis was cheap on this one. It's all over the place and (too much) full of ideas. It changes genre in every song or so, sometimes sounding like the Pixies, sometimes almost like country, sometimes almost like soft rock or jazzy... It's sometimes brilliant, it's sometimes a bit WTF -- but let's say he's trying -- he lost me more than a couple of times but then I'm hooked again. Cut the thing in half, and it would have been a banger. Still worth the listen.

I was never really a Pixies fan, which is weird because they were theoretically right up my street back in the day. Anyhoo, for this album Black Francis became Frank Black and released this mish-mash of post punk, surf-guitar, garage and reggae infused songs. It clicked into place for me on the track Ole Mulholland where I realised that he was channelling the spirit of Lou Reed on a song about the LA water system of the 1920s. Infrastructure-tastic!