Frank Black ‎- Fast Man Raider Man (Reissue, 2021) LP

The solo album of Frank Black (Frank Black) "Honeycomb" was considered by many to be a spectacular, but one-off. It's no joke - an alternative artist with experience and one of the forerunners of grunge suddenly moved to country rock. But a year has passed, the musician released a" double ""Fast Man Raider Man" - and we got about the same thing, only in double size.
The recording of the album brought together top-class musicians: guitarist Steve Cropper, widely known for the Blues Brothers, founder of Blood Sweat & Tears, organist Al Cooper (Al Kooper), bassist Tom Peterson (Tom Petersson) from Cheap Trick, a whole constellation of amazing drummers: Levon Helm (Levon Helm) from The Band, Simon Kirke (Simon Kirke) from Free, as well as the ubiquitous samurai drums Chester Thompson and Jim Keltner. Only now the whole honest company is playing something unhurried, thoughtful, with melancholic tunes and notes of slide guitars flying into the dusty blue sky. There is also a good example of bluegrass on the album - "You Can't Crucify Yourself", and samples of pre-rock boogie like "Dirty Old Town", and something saloon in "Wanderlust". A delay of "Dog Sleep", a brief return to post-punk in "In The Time Of My Ruin", road country rock "Kiss My Ring" and "Highway To Lowdown"... You can also look for echoes of Lou Reed's "Heroine" in "When The Paint Grows Darker Still". But this song is already good.
At first glance, everything is simple - old Frank has entered a solid age, at which it is somehow stupid to be a rock rebel, and in general, he never really wanted to be a successful showman and pontyarschik. And what other roots should an American hold on to? This is the outer layer. But God and the devil, as you know, are hidden in small things. So let's try to dig deeper.
What is "Raider Man"? Formally, it is a song with an acoustic guitar. What are guitar stereo effects? A pleasant seasoning, without which country and folk have so far managed perfectly well. But here it is simply impossible without them - they have become an integral part of the guitar part. Or the seemingly simple thing "If Your Poison Gets You"... Simple? And did you count the shares with the bars? Also, by the way, art is to play something fancy so that the details of the score do not climb into the ears of a narcissistic show-off, but are perceived by the consciousness as something natural, and at the same time actively work on a subconscious level. It is also necessary to note the "Johnny Barleycorn"number, which is as slow as an asphalt skating rink. Some of the instrumental parts here have a kind of"deflection down". The piano supports the guitar riff with some kind of uncomfortable fifth, and the stringy wind instruments even balance on the verge of atonality. This could be the grunge by now, if its representatives really wanted to prove it with a real musical style, and not a one-day toy lowered from above. And the ballad "Seven Days"is an unexpected bias in old-school soul, and is performed in such a way that tears come to your eyes. A living reproach to what is called the word "soul" now, and at the same time is considered only as a more or less glamorous object of purchase and sale.
Frank Black will always be true to his inner core. He is already faithful to the fact that he will not allow any musical style in his performance to turn into a formal set of techniques. This definition, which was wandering somewhere in the back of my mind while listening to" Honeycomb", finally found concrete outlines.