Black Francis

When Eugene, OR, comes up in conversation, several fixations quickly pop to the average mind: rain, forest, hippies, marijuana and Ducks. Easy to miss would be a chubby, middle-aged man with a shaved head who often adorns dark sunglasses. But that, perhaps, may be just how Frank Black likes it.

Leisurely enjoying the morning at his home in the rainy college town, the former leader of the Pixies is on daddy duty. “We all have kind of like this flu thing and my wife is eight months pregnant and she’s just wiped out. I’ve got the babies with me downstairs so we may be periodically interrupted,” tells Black through sounds of toddler babble. Already a father of four, his two youngest, Lucy and Jack, can be heard adjoining his every move. “Oh, I see Jack, okay, all right. Let daddy talk on the phone for a few minutes.”

    Born Charles Michael Kittridge Thompson IV, the self-titled Frank Black has enjoyed a fairytale career of indie success. The Pixies, both in their efflorescence and after, have been embraced the world over, and Black has since sustained an acclaimed solo career over the course of 16 albums. Returning to the proven stage name of Black Francis for 2007’s fall release Bluefinger, Black has continued channeling the powers of old for his newest output; a seven song EP tagged Sv n F ng rs. The process of writing, recording and producing said record took place over just six days, which Black is quick to downplay. “I don’t know if it’s that big of a deal. As long as I’ve got a day or two in the studio [I can] come up with something. It may not be ‘Hey Jude,’ [laughs] but I’ll come up with something.”

    The creative burst came from label Cooking Vinyl simply asking for a b-side. Black, typical of his prolific nature, proceeded to hash out six additional cuts in a flurry. Violet Clark (who also happens to be Black’s wife) and Jason Carter, both of whom joined on Bluefinger, make returns to the studio filling out bass and drums respectively. Carter also wears the producer hat, but more to the tune of engineering assistance and relaxed constructive feedback.

    “I set out to do at least 10 tracks, and I could feel the creative muse leave the room literally after we completed track seven. And as I set out to create track eight I was like, ‘This is gonna suck,’ and it did,” informs Black.

    But don’t allow that comment to play tricks. The seven surviving songs of Sv n F ng rs ring true to any fan of Black Francis’ past work. From the lyrical oddity of “The Seus” to the unsheathing tempo of “I Sent Away,” the pleading simplicity of “Half Man” to the serene beauty of “Garbage Heap,” Black once again delivers. As always, the pick-and-pull abstraction of his songwriting is ever-present, adding a measure here, subtracting a measure there.



    Black explicates his creativity: “I do it instinctually, and I notice that it’s not a square phrase. That it’s got a half bar at the end of it, or [is] a three bar phrase, or a 10 beat expression, you know, anything that’s not eight or four. And I write songs that are in fours or sixteens or eights also, but I like to deviate from that. It’s nice when it’s just slick as shit. A great example would be the famous ‘Money’ riff by Pink Floyd. When you can do something that’s really catchy and groovy, but that’s not fours, it’s cool.”

    Conceptually speaking, Black had eluded to F ng rs being fostered via bawdy, mythical sex.

    “The concept off the record is demigod,” he begins. “And the traditional definition, half human and half god, comes out of this ancient male belief, or whatever, that if the woman lies with a mortal man, and then in the same evening lies with a god, the combination of the mortal semen with the immortal semen creates the so-called demigod. That’s a fairly evocative kind of scenario.”

    Black, however, expanded the notion of sexuality beyond the fabled form for additional tie-ins. “[The] song called ‘I Sent Away’ is a reference to an alt-sex fetish robot. From a science fiction standpoint, you could say the android is kind of a demigod concept. I didn’t realize how specific the kink was but — ” flipping the switch to fatherly task managing — “Jack be gentle, please. Don’t push your sister.”

    On top of the fact that Black has released six discs of material over the past two-and-a-half years, much has been made, at least from the standpoint of press, about the return of Black Francis, which holds significant meaning to longtime followers of Black’s labors. But does this change in name actually denote a change in brainwave, or are we just blowing smoke?

    “I think that was always the hope; that somehow I would tap into some other kind of face or another door would open,” he contemplatively starts. “It feels like it has. I’ve certainly been able to crank out more records, since I’ve become Black Francis, at a faster pace. It might just be because I have kids now, and so I sort of value my musical time away. It’s like ‘Hey, I got a few days away booked, better make a record.’ Boom. Maybe it’s some sort of primal caregiver thing going on. It’s like I got four kids, I got another one on the way, I got to make sure that their gonna be able to go to Harvard or wherever they want to go,” Black speaks with a chuckle, before intervening, “Lucy, no-no, get down from there. No-no.”



    Whatever the case, and wherever he’s coming from, let me just say it: Long live Black Francis.

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