Grand Duchy: Petit Fours

That big fucking shadow constantly trailing Frank Black is his Pixies legacy. As the bald-headed and shrieking frontman of that most fabled and celebrated of indie bands - bow, genuflect and offer a sacrifice in their honor - Black's post-Pixies efforts will likely always be weighed against that band's albums. Sure it's completely unfair and sets Black up for high expectations that are impossible to meet, but like other artists who have done their definitive work as part of a band before venturing out on a somewhat checkered solo career - Paul McCartney, Joe Strummer, Bob Mould, Ricky Martin - it goes with the territory.

Judged by any standards and setting legacies aside, Grand Duchy's Petits Fours is an entirely underwhelming and largely lifeless album. Trading under the Black Francis guise this time around, Francis is joined by his wife Violet Clark, guitars, drums and way too many synthesizers and various bleeps and blips. Points for experimentation simply aren't enough to save this album from being anything more than a curiosity piece at best.

Pixies fans who might be horrified to hear such a synth-heavy sound from Francis should abandon ship now. Indeed, nearly every song either starts with or features synths that sound ripped from the 1980s playbook; to the duo's credit, they do acknowledge that Clark is a fan of that decade's music. Still in this case that love translates into a pretty dull set of songs. Most songs adhere to the same basic pattern, with tracks like "Come On Over To My House," "Lovesick," and "Seeing Stars" all opening with synths that are eventually augmented (or put out of their misery) by guitars, drums and occasional keyboards. This pattern soon becomes both predictable and grating, with the album's scant nine songs and under 40-minute running time seeming much longer. On other songs this approach feels too tame, reserved, and precise; Clark's overly careful singing doesn't do "The Long Song" any favors, while Francis' patented screams on "Black Suit" aren't enough to offset the album's sheer repetitiveness. Less forgivable is the album's overall inaccessibility, with the listener left wondering whether the album is one big inside joke or Francis and Clark simply indulging their musical whims. Judging from the giggles on "Volcano!" or the too-clever humor of "Break the Angels," maybe it is. But we don't know, and the songs aren't interesting enough to make us want to find out.

This review shouldn't be construed as yet another reactionary Pixies fan wanting Francis to record Surfer Rosa Revisited. We can safely put those Pixies albums (not so fast, Trompe Le Monde) on the pedestal where they belong, periodically dust them off and go shit crazy for how great they really are, and them put them back. Taken at face value, without considering the history of the man whose name is associated with the album, Petits Fours sounds like little more than either a bizarre homage or pastiche to the glory days of 1980's synth, with guitars and drums thrown in almost as afterthoughts. Certainly Francis has created some excellent music in his post-Pixies career - I'm excluding those reunion shows that get belched out periodically of late - and it's always welcome to see a musician who's clearly not interested in reliving days of past glories. Yet that disregard for the past that served Francis well on standout album Teenager Of the Year and the underrated Honeycomb sinks Petits Fours. Perhaps best left to the completists out there, it's a bland album that, despite the best efforts of those involved, all too frequently sounds both overindulgent and inessential.

Book Review: Doolittle by Ben Sisario

Several weeks back the local alternative music radio station here in St. Louis treated listeners to a “way back weekend.” Instead of hearing those godawful songs that pass for alternative music these days, listeners of a certain age could act like it was the early 1990s all over again, with songs by the good (Nirvana), the bad (Stone Temple Pilots), and the fugly (Bush).

Perhaps not surprisingly, absent from these 48 hours of grunge-era goodies was anything by the Pixies. Despite the mass recognition, plaudits, and breathless write-ups the band finally received during its recent reunion tour, the Pixies are still in some ways familiar only to a certain type of music fan.

For that certain type of music fan (obsessive, opinionated, and stalker-like loyal... er, dedicated), Ben Sisario’s take on the Pixies’ classic album Doolittle is a welcome treat. It’s also one of the better entries in the sometimes erratic 33 1/3 book series from Continuum. In a little more than 100 pages, Sisario covers all the key areas of both the Pixies and the album, including a nice overview of the band’s history, how the songs took shape, the quiet-loud-quiet-loud approach that runs throughout the album, the critical and commercial responses (or non-responses in the United States, as the band was largely ignored) to the album, and the album’s overarching themes.

Any analysis of a song’s lyrics runs the risk of being an exercise in futility; the reviewer in many cases can only guess at what the writer’s intentions were, has limited knowledge of the writer’s life and cultural influences, and makes assumptions based on his or her own interpretations of the lyrics. Pixies singer, lyricist, and top-ten bald musician of all time Frank Black was interviewed for this book, which allows Sisario to avoid these pitfalls. Sisario actually cruised around Portland with Black in the musician’s Cadillac, talking about the Pixies music and even stopping at a local record store to buy a copy of Leonard Cohen’s I’m Your Man.

Besides making countless Pixie fans jealous, the end result of this approach is that Black provides many details about the album, especially the lyrics. For years Black was somewhat evasive and argumentative when questions about his lyrics were asked; he would often maintain that the words meant nothing and just sounded good strung together. Even if that does hold true in some cases on Doolittle (“Silver” comes to mind), Black provides tons of details into the album’s major topics and even into the context of certain lines.

Through Sisario’s musical joyride with Black, Doolittle’s themes of violence, death, and the horizontal tango, as well as the twisted and dark sense of humor that rests just below the surface, are examined and discussed. Black talks about how the album’s songs were influenced by Surrealism (“slicing up eyeballs” from “Debaser”), the Old Testament (“Dead” and “Gouge Away”), and crazy former roommates (“Crackity Jones”), among other things. Black is clearly sincere when discussing the album; he’s not blowing smoke or BS’ing about the songs in 1960s Bob Dylan fashion. Sisario’s book is a great glimpse into how Black assimilated these various influences and reflected them in the album’s lyrics.

The book does have some minor flaws. Sisario sometimes dives deep into what even the most obsessive Pixies fan might consider boring minutiae; things like the number of beats per song or the fact that a song is in 4/4 time are interesting but probably unnecessary in creating a better understanding of either the band or the album. And when Black offers only cursory input for some songs (“I Bleed," for example), Sisario tends to fill in the blanks with shaky conclusions.

Regardless of these shortcomings, Sisario’s book offers numerous insights and revelations into both the Pixies and Doolittle. Pixies’ fans won’t be disappointed.