Frank Black Honeycomb

You're spoilt for choice if you like your alt.rockers grown up these days. If you were embarrassed to listen to Norah Jones (as well you might be) then Tanya Donelly's solo records inject a touch of class into chilled, melodic songs. If you fancy some full-on punk rock, then there's no band around at the moment to touch Kristin Hersh's Fifty Foot Wave. Bob Mould still has followers drooling, and even Sonic Youth have managed to stay relevant.

Frank Black has taken a different approach again. This is his first solo record since he formed the Catholics in 1998, and it's informed by his work with this band rather than harking back to the quirky pop-rock of Teenager Of The Year or Cult Of Ray. The country stylings reached a zenith on Show Me Your Tears, which made No Ripcord's Top 50 in 2003, and Honeycomb distils this and mixes with the informed and consistently intriguing songwriting style that has marked the man's career.

Reforming the Pixies was a strange move for a man who's always made much of not looking back at himself, although to be fair he's probably come through it significantly better off than when he started. Acclaim (both critical and commercial) has been pretty hard to come by in his solo career: although always rapturously received by fans, Black's difficulty is that his albums always take a long time to fully appreciate. The average length of time someone has to get to know an album before reviewing it is not really enough to fully appreciate the subtleties and nuances of, for example, a comparatively simple song like first single I Burn Today. In these days where playing 'with feeling' is so highly regarded, Black's deceptively straightforward vocal style doesn't always reveal the passion behind the songs, at first glance.

Alright, so enough with the excuses already. It's a good record, definitely. As usual the songs are superbly crafted, and very well-executed. As good as the Catholics certainly were, even they wouldn't argue that to have a line up of musicians such as Steve Cropper, Reggie Young, Dann Penn and Spooner Oldham virtually guarantees class.

The album was recorded mere days before the first Pixies shows last year, in Nashville, with Jon Tiven (engineer for, among others, Wilson Pickett). The quality of the backing speaks volumes about the musicians, and this time (maybe for the first time?), Frank Black's vocals really hit the mark. Whereas before, the focus was on the lyrics and structures, on Honeycomb it's really possible to revel in the beauty of the entire sound - this is really noticeable in the early highlight, the cover of Dark End Of The Street, where the delicate tone of the track calls for a subtlety of pitching and falsetto that you just wouldn't expect from the man who penned Tame.

There's certainly nothing along those lines here. Even Black's last record included some rock monsters like Massif Centrale, but you'd be hard pressed to find anything even remotely resembling a distortion pedal here. And guess what, it's all the better for it. For a chap past the 40 mark, it would sound pretty tacky anyway to be writing songs based on a sound better suited to adolescent rock anyway.

Fortunately, country music is undergoing something of a revival in credibility these days. Gone are the days when the public face to most people was Garth Brooks - these days folks are more likely to name the Johnny Cash's, the Will Oldham's, the Ryan Adams' of this world as icons. Honeycomb, with its country-soul heart may not fit exactly into the desolate landscapes of these, but there's enough melancholy and underlying pensiveness to appeal to anyone looking for music a little more intelligent than can be seen on MTV2. For those looking just for superb songs and playing, then Frank Black steps up to provide once again. Here comes your man, indeed.