Who is Black Francis? And where has he been all these years?

The first of these questions seems fatuous, the second coy. Even the 21-year-old hipster who was still eating strained peas and filling diapers in 1987 when the Pixies released Come On Pilgrim knows that Black Francis was the frontman, resident UFOlogist, and tortured lead screamer for this most pivotal underground band that almost made it mainstream — opened for U2 during the Achtung Baby tour, for Chrissakes — before he broke the band up by fax.

And Black Francis hasn’t gone anywhere, despite the fact that there have been no releases on which that nom de plume played from 1991’s Trompe Le Monde to 2004’s “Bam Thwok.” That selfsame callow hipster knows that Black Francis became Frank Black when he went solo in 1993, and released a series of solid, if workmanlike, releases between the debut s/t and 2006’s Fast Man/Raider Man.

So much for the history. The questions remain: where has Black Francis been in Frank Black’s solo work for thirteen to fifteen long years? And who is Black Francis, as opposed to Frank Black, anyway? And, most pertinent to Tuesday’s full-length release Bluefinger, why is this the first release of Frank Black’s career to be credited to Black Francis? These are all related questions with one at their core: what is the Black Francis sound?

As I ask the question, I hear Charles Michael Kittridge Thompson IV, aka Frank Black, aka Black Francis, cough, then laugh dryly, then advise me to go f$cking die.

But there is something to the change of name, for sure. Or else this would have been the fifteenth release credited to Frank Black. So is this a change of soul? Or just of, you’ll pardon this squarest of thoughts, brand?

MBA voice over: The Black Francis brand stands for slicing up eyeballs, screaming, quiet loud quiet, being the band that inspired Nirvana, and being the most awesome band ever. The Frank Black brand stands for a workmanlike approach to rock and roll. Direct to two track. Country rock. Low sales. As he sang in “Chip Away Boy,” “I used to have some fun/Me and everyone/Now I’m just employed.”

And that may be all there is to it. Except:

Exhibit A: “Captain Pasty.” Mars attacking. Irregular meters. And that awesome growl-laugh that opens up the track. It will make your car go like nitrous, if you happen to be behind the wheel when you are listening.

Exhibit B: “Tight Black Rubber,” with its Fugazi meets Nirvana bass + guitar duet settling into a Meat Puppets meets Velvets chugging rocker full of tension and bondage tropes.

Exhibit C: “Your Mouth Into Mine.” Could be a Frank Black song, except the spaces between the verses run over with Black Francis’s love-as-body-invasion imagery at a speed that feels at once relaxed and chemically enhanced. Love never sounded so much like theft.

Exhibit D: “You Can’t Break a Heart and Have It.” The one song on the album that provides a tight connection to the album’s supposed inspiration, Dutch artist/musician/drug user Herman Brood, whose song this was before Black Francis made it his own.

Exhibit E: “Threshold Apprehension.” A romp through Pixies touchstones, from high pitched, screaming vocals to four-chord hooks to girlish spoken background vocals (courtesy Charles’s wife Violet Clark) to two of the finest couplets in post-Pixies rock: “Every little sh*t gotta find his salt lick/If I don’t find my babe I’m gonna be junk sick” and “Grand Marnier and a pocketful of speed/We did it all night til we started to bleed.” The hit single the Pixies should have had in the summer of 2007, showing up first as a bonus track on the best of compilation Frank Black 93-03. Your reviewer was stuck in traffic on the Mass Pike the first time he heard the song and nearly rear-ended the car in front of him, so immediately propulsive was the impact of the song, and so hard was he laughing with the force of the bliss coming at him from six speakers.

Even in slacker moments an animus of tension and anger moves the record forward. “She Took All the Money”’s “shama lama ding dang” chorus is pushed forward by an irritable rhythm guitar, surprisingly sweet backing vocals from Violet Clark, and some impatient drumming that takes the song out on just the right dry note.

So: what makes it a Black Francis work? There are some descriptive touchstones — screaming, odd meters, UFOs, Lou Reed as Surrealist lyrics — that are ultimately insufficient to describe what’s going on here. What this is is nothing more than the rebirth of Charles Thompson, his musical juices revitalized by the 2004 tour with the Pixies. As he says in the publicity notes for the album, reunions “are bittersweet, and all of the rekindled foreplay of performing the old Black Francis songs never warmed to the full coitus of a reunion LP … I privately went back to the old stage name … almost as a joke. I couldn’t get the Pixies back into the studio, but I would transform into my alter ego of yesteryear.” And even if there is no Herman Brood revival as a result of this LP — Wikipedia provides only a Google image search link to his artwork, and only one compilation of his music is available in the usual download sources — the transgressive junkie artist/musician/suicide deserves some posthumous credit for waking up Black Francis and sending him out screaming into the light of 2007.

When an artist is so moved by the release of his new album as to go out and break a world record for highest-altitude concert, it’s hard to avoid puns about other high things: spirits, melodies, hopes. Norwegian artist Magnet raised just such allusions in a March solo acoustic performance of his new album in a plane between Oslo and Reykjavik (in-flight altitude: 40,000 feet; check the video). Now the album is being released stateside, and the question is: will the high spirits of the album live up to the high hopes for its release? Will its world record for altitude take the album to similar heights on the charts?

Before we tackle those questions—what is it about Scandinavian indie rock artists? First Peter Bjorn and John come out of nowhere (er, Sweden) with “Young Folks,” with a whistle hook to die for (and which is already being sampled by Kanye West). Now Magnet, aka Even Johansen, brings a brilliant collection of pop songwriting in his third full-length, The Simple Life, along with pop production that the Shins would give eyeteeth for. What is it about the Scandinavians? Something in the Northern Lights, perhaps.

So, about the music. Some things this release is not:

1. A continuation of the dark, earnest vibe of The Tourniquet

2. Anything to do with Paris or Nicole

Instead, The Simple Life is a collection of upbeat, clever pop, propelled by killer horn and string riffs and buoyed by Johansen’s high, aching vocals. Where The Tourniquet’s “Hold On” registers as an urgent, synth-thick plea, many of the songs on The Simple Life are joyous little ditties, including the handclaps of “The Gospel Song” and the bouncy drumline of “Lonely No More.” Throughout, unusual instrument choices pop out of the texture: a banjo here, a treble harmonica there, poking through the horn sections and pianos.

In fact (again apropos given Magnet’s world record), the one adjective that comes to mind over and over again on relistening to the album is buoyant. That is not to say, however, naïve. The song craftsmanship is tight throughout, with “You Got Me”’s brilliant fingerpicking and horns offset with the string quartet and oboe of “Count.” Buoyant goes a little overboard in the cover of Bob Marley’s “She’s Gone,” including whistle chorus and woodblock percussion. It’s like a meringue, so airy that it threatens to dissolve into nothing at every turn. It holds together somehow, but I sincerely hope a full Magnet/Marley tribute album isn’t in the works.

Is this going to be the album that sends Magnet up the charts, to the toppermost of the poppermost? Unlikely. For all the airiness, there is a depth of sadness and empathy in the lyrics that grounds the album in an un-poplike sensibility. So it is that a wine bottle solo in “Lucid” takes on melancholy resonance that belie the rest of the album’s grin. And this is the ultimate joy of The Simple Life: it bears close examination and re-examination and brings new pleasures in each new light, all while still remaining a hummable pop masterpiece. So, probably no pop stardom for Magnet. But maybe the beginning of a beautiful friendship for the lucky listeners who wind their way into this album.

Yesterday marked the 10th anniversary of the disappearance of Jeff Buckley into the Mississippi River, and into legend. At the time, the death of the 30-year-old singer felt like a body blow, and ten years haven't dulled the impact; if anything, the feeling of cosmic unfairness has deepened over the years. So the new anthology So Real: Songs from Jeff Buckley comes at a time where many of us were pondering Jeff's legacy anyway, and it is that rarest of things, a greatest hits that illuminates and surprises rather than simply summing up. There is no way that I can write a review that does justice to this in a linear way; there are too many connections striving to be made. I will include these as asides throughout the review.Number of Jeff Buckley albums and EPs released in his lifetime: 2Number of albums, EPs, live albums, DVDs, greatest hits compilations, box sets, and deluxe editions released after his death: 7
The compilers of the collection, Mary Guibert (Jeff's mother) and Tom Burleigh, had a challenge: How do you do a greatest hits album for an artist who only had one album before his untimely death? They chose an unconventional path: include half the debut album, Grace, together with selected b-sides, studio work released posthumously, and released and unreleased live recordings. It could have sounded like a shambles; it's a testament to Jeff's artistic brilliance and consistency that it sounds like a coherent whole.
Number of tribute songs to Jeff Buckley listed on Wikipedia: 51 
In one form or another, eight of the ten songs that formed Grace are on this disc, four in their studio version ("Last Goodbye," "Lover, You Should've Come Over," "Grace," "Hallelujah"). The compilers chose alternate versions (that previously appeared on the Grace Legacy Edition of a few years ago) for "Eternal Life" and "Dream Brother," a live version of "So Real" that was previously only available on a promo single, and the hypnotic version of "Mojo Pin" from Live at Sin-É. From Buckley's posthumous Sketches for My Sweetheart, the Drunk, we get "The Sky is a Landfill" and the sultry "Everybody Here Wants You," and the driving "Vancouver." The delicate "Je N'en Connais Pas La Fin" (also from Sin-É) also appears as a bridge to the closing three songs.
Brilliant collaborations left off the album: "Fireflies" and "Southern Cross" with Patti Smith, "Faith Salons" with Brenda Kahn, "All Flowers (in Time Bend Toward the Sun)" with Elizabeth Fraser, "I Want Someone Badly" with Shudder to Think Never-heard collaborations and covers mentioned in the liner notes: "Kashmir," "Shombalor," "Cobra" (John Zorn cover with Mike Doughty)
The remaining two songs are where this collection sets itself apart from a "greatest hits" mentality into the realm of the fan compilation. "Forget Her," a Grace-era b-side that also appeared on the Legacy Edition, has long been one of my favorite Jeff Buckley songs. A straight-driving impassioned blues with little of the Middle Eastern meets Zeppelin flavor of his debut, it has the dual distinction of being more singable and more direct than most of his early output, presaging the slow jam of "Everybody Here Wants You" and other late tracks.
Age of Jeff Buckley on May 29, 1997 when he drowned: 30Age of Tim Buckley, Jeff's father, when he died of a drug overdose on June 28, 1975: 28 
The final track, a never-before-heard live performance of the Smiths' "I Know It's Over," wraps the compilation in the mystery of Jeff Buckley's passing, what Mike Doughty calls in the liner notes his "effortless ability to become a myth, a legend." Where the Mystery White Boy live recording included "I Know It's Over" in medley with "Hallelujah," here that striking first lyric, the finest line that Morrissey ever wrote for Jeff Buckley, stands on its own and makes you catch your breath with the unfairness of it. Because the rest of the collection is a testament to his brilliance and range as an artist, performer, and songwriter, the ending hurts all the more ten years on. At least we have more to remember him by now than we did then.
Lyrics in Jeff Buckley originals and covers that presage his death by drowning: "This body will never be safe from harm" ("Mojo Pin")"As their shoes fill up with water" ("Lover, You Should Have Come Over""Asleep in the sand with the ocean rushing over" ("Dream Brother")"Just like the ocean, always in love with the moon/It's overflowing" ("Opened Once") "Stay with me under these waves tonight" ("Nightmares by the Sea")
"Mother, I can feel the soil falling over my head" ("I Know It's Over")
Buckley fans are nothing if not opinionated. So Real comes close to meeting my high standards for a single-disc compilation, though there are a few changes I'd make—as a fan, I'll always want more rarities. What would your greatest hits of Jeff Buckley look like?

Long missing from the US catalog of everyone’s favorite moody goths, this reissue of The Top fills a void in the CD discography of The Cure—since it was never issued on CD in the US in the first place. But many Cure fans who are hearing it for the first time will find it a puzzling listen. Twenty-two years after its issue, it remains a profoundly unsettled disc that documents a band in transition (and indeed, a band mostly consisting of one member, Robert Smith).

My previous review in The Cure reissue series, of last year’s re-release of Faith, noted that “the darkness that flowered on Faith is what many still consider to be The Cure’s classic sound,” and while that sound is in evidence here, there are a number of other sounds as well—for better or worse. For one thing, the percussion is surprisingly tame for a Cure release, particularly on songs like “Birdmad Girl,” which has a backing track that could have come from any number of 80s acts. The excellent booklet claims that the following track, “Wailing Wall,” was strongly influenced by Smith’s work with Siouxsie and the Banshees, and its atmospherics are appropriately menacing. Other tracks sound familiar in reverse: I found myself wondering if Nick Cave had been listening to “Piggy in the Mirror” when he made “Abattoir Blues,” the effect is so similar. And the use of the Prophet, that staple of Peter Gabriel’s 1980s recordings, on “Dressing Up” makes the song feel familiar (if dated).

The one track to surface from this album I was previously familiar with was “The Caterpillar,” which made an appearance on the Staring at the Sea compilation. But where on that release it made a clear connection with other Cure songs like “Lovecats,” “In Between Days” and “Close to Me,” on The Top it stands alone. Yes, the other tracks on the album each have their distinct sound, but nothing prepares you for “The Caterpillar”: the scratchy violin intro, the over-the-top fey vocals, the skittering piano part. This is “happy Cure,” the other personality that is locked inside Robert Smith’s head alongside the glum Morlock, and it still brings a smile after 22 years.

It’s even more amazing that that song crept onto the album when you consider the circumstances of the recording sessions: Laurence Tolhurst drunk or drugged out, Smith himself a few inches from hospitalization (literally—the follow-up tour had to be cancelled thanks to a bad case of blood poisoning), and the rest of the band hardly in the studio (Smith played a lot of this album, except for the drums, himself). In that context, “Caterpillar” seems absolutely miraculous, as does the band’s subsequent revitalization on The Head on the Door.

Bonus material on this deluxe reissue includes the usual assortment of demos and live tracks, including some quite strong demos for never before heard songs. My personal favorite, “Happy the Man,” looks forward to Disintegration’s “Last Dance” in its harmonic language even as its lyrics and verbal imagery elude understanding, and was released in its final form as a b-side to “The Caterpillar.”

An essential release? No. But also undeserving of its tag (from Smith himself) of “worst Cure album ever.” There’s a lot on The Top to like.

When I read a note on a French Sting fansite that the man formerly known as Gordon Sumner would be releasing an album of classical lute music — a survey of the music of John Dowland — I stopped, goggled, and giggled. Then I got depressed.

Sting was long one of my favorite artists, but he has been going down in my estimation since Ten Summoner’s Tales — a decent album, but with the seeds of his spiral into adult alternative toothlessness sown within. More ominously for Tuesday’s release of Songs from the Labyrinth, an inside page of the booklet featured Sting posing with a lute and looking faintly ridiculous.

Why am I so down on this concept? Let’s just say it’s not new to me. In 2000, when Lisa and I visited London over a long weekend, we took a tour of the reconstructed Globe Theatre, which was hosting a benefit concert later that night. As we emerged into the actual theatre, our guide paused, went ahead, then came back and told us we were being permitted to sit in on the rehearsal for the event.

On stage: Vinnie Jones (of Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels and X-Men: The Last Stand), James Taylor, and Sting, among others. The theme of the day was Elizabethan entertainment, so we got to see Jones play Mercutio in a Romeo and Juliet pastiche. Taylor sang an original but period-influenced tune and Sting played and sang a Dowland tune. Badly.

In his defense, he was clearly not feeling well (it was a little chilly, but he had an orange scarf tightly around his neck and was not doing a lot of moving around). He gave himself a self-deprecating kick in the ass as he left the stage. The whole experience boded ill.

So now comes the actual album. My Dowland touchstone is probably his “Come, Come Again,” which the Virginia Glee Club regularly performed. The curious should download track 16 of Songs from the Labyrinth, which basically sums up the whole album: odd arrangement featuring the lute totally dropping out behind Sting’s voice, and deadly vocal performance full of apparently-intended-to-be-emotive diphthongs and toothless fricatives.

Seriously, there are vocal lines that sound as though they’re sung through dentures. Worse, there’s no variation to the vocal lines: the performances are note-note-note, with little or no vocal inflection and no phrasing. Then there’s the overdubbing. Awkward as the solo lines are, they sound like sheer genius compared to the same voice in two part harmony.

Still, the whole thing isn’t bad. There are some interesting solo lute numbers and it does grown on you with repeated listenings. It’s endearing and an interesting experiment. If it were released as a fan club album, it would be a cool rarity. On balance though, I don’t think it will be the Great Crossover Album it should be.

Christmas albums by popular artists face a pretty significant challenge: how to make the holiday canon, which ranges from medieval plainchant (“O come, o come, Emmanuel”) to high classical music to Tin Pan Alley tunes and children’s TV show theme music, sound like it belongs to the artist and not let the artist be overwhelmed by what can be a lot of schlock. There are three basic approaches to the challenge: go ultra-traditional with the arrangements, create a bunch of originals in the Christmas spirit, or just be yourself and damn the torpedoes. My latest favorite Christmas album, Bootsy Collins’ Christmas is 4 Ever, takes the third path with a vengeance and ends up with one of the most fun Christmas albums I’ve listened to.

Bootsy, for the uninitiated (though that hardly seems possible), is the funky, funky bass player behind James Brown’s late ‘60s output (“Sex Machine,” “Super Bad,”) and George Clinton’s Parliament and Funkadelic (where he gained notoriety for his costumes — star-shaped sunglasses and thigh-high rhinestone studded space boots as well as his outer-space bass playing), and a pretty substantial run fronting his own combo, Bootsy’s Rubber Band. This, in sum, is a man who could definitively answer Funkadelic’s question, “What is soul?” So what, pray tell, is Bootsy doing facing down such white bread Christmas classics as “Jingle Bells,” “Winter Wonderland,” “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer,” and “Silent Night”?

As you might expect, Bootsy solves the clash of genres by throwing a party. And a pretty damned good party too. The arrangements on this collection are tight, with key contributions from fellow ex-PFunk stars Bernie Worrell, Garry Shider, and Fred Wesley (who arranges the tight horn charts that propel the most spectacular songs and is the other James Brown alum on the record), and an array of guest vocalists ranging from the traditional R&B styles of a bunch of folks whose names I didn’t recognize to some rap contributions by Snoop Dogg. There are voice cameos from other friends of Bootsy, from Buckethead and George Clinton to the late Roger Troutman, bringing Christmas greetings.

And damned if it doesn’t all hang together. The horns make it feel like a Parliament reunion, and there’s a propulsive funk beat that runs through the whole album that makes one want to stand up and dance. (For this writer that’s no mean thing.) But for me the standout moment is deep in “Silent Night,” which may be the only time this holiday standard has grooved, where Bootsy answers the sung line “Sleep in heavenly peace” with a fervent “You and me, baby!” Aah, right on.

Back in 2001, I went to see a show by Josh Haden’s former band Spain at the Crocodile Cafe in Seattle. I was really into Spain at the time, and soaked up the whole atmosphere: the hushed reaction of the crowd, the tight performances of the band, Josh Haden’s eyes-closed, stone-still performance with his bass at the vocal mic. But the reaction of my friend—a sarcastic request for “another mellow song!”—made me realize that Spain lived or died by how convincing you found its blend of slow, quiet, blues and country-inflected late night bar music and heart-on-sleeve sincerity. Certainly the band’s best moments—the song “Every Time I Try,” snagged by Wim Winders for the soundtrack to his film The End of Violence; their superb swan song “I Believe”; and their entire first album, The Blue Moods of Spain, all revolve around that formula.

Over time, though, their work began to feel just a little like it was a formula. And the more the sound drifted toward country, the more I felt like Josh’s heart wasn’t in the songwriting. The songs were still simply beautiful—”Mary” is an aching melody that has been stuck in my head for days at a time—but the lyrical content seemed less broad in intention or scope than it had on the first few albums.Turning, then, to review Josh Haden’s first proper solo album, a self-released affair called Devoted, one must ask: are the songs still slow? Is the country twang still there? Are any of them not love songs? In other words, what’s new?

The answer: Josh Haden found Dan the Automator.

Yes, the songs are still slow love songs. Having set a landmark with his song “Spiritual” (and really, having a song from your first album covered by Johnny Cash has to count as a home run), Josh doesn’t dwell overlong in that starkly religious land, though the closing “Salvation” returns to the territory in a pan-religious way. There is a powerful religious subtext, though, to almost every other song on the album, whether it’s “only love will set you free” in “Discontent” or “take my hand and never go astray” in “Show Me the Way.” This is perhaps to be expected given Josh’s position on the purpose of music: “Why waste my time with music that doesn’t help to bring me to a deeper understanding of life?”

And, again, thanks to Dan the Automator’s beats and some quirky keyboards from John Medeski (of Medeski, Martin, and Wood), the sound is totally different from Spain, even with the continued presence of guitarist Merlo Podlewski: less bluesy, less organic, brighter, flatter, more trancelike in places (indeed, at times Josh’s performance recalls another singer-songwriter who hooked up with a beat-focused producer, Beth Orton). Not all the experiments are successful. The upbeat “Drifting” is spoiled by an uncertain-pitched vocal and a beat that feels canned, and the harmonies on “Want You So Bad” are likewise wobbly. But balancing out these low points are some real gems: the apocalyptic imagery of “Hallelujah,” the dark seduction of “Love You More,” and even the Spain-manque of “Light of Day.” In fact, some of the strongest moments on the disc are the ones that sound most like Josh’s old band.

Which, I suppose, begs the ungenerous question: why change at all? But songs like “Show You the Way” and “Devoted” blend the plaintive songwriting of Haden’s older canon with a fresher musical palette, and maybe that’s the value of this recording: helping to distill the essence of Haden’s songwriting in the absence of the sonic hallmarks of the old band.