Spin Art
2004
Black Francis Demo
About This Album
2004 was the year that Charles Kitteridge Thompson IV seemed to finally find a balance between the legacy of his work with the Pixies and his separate identity as a solo artist. After all, that year's reunion with the Pixies could have only come about because he felt secure enough in his work as Frank Black to revisit the songs he wrote as Black Francis. The two-disc set Frank Black Francis also bridges the gap between his personas, offering a disc of solo demos recorded the day before the Pixies went into the studio to record The Purple Tape (half of which became Come on Pilgrim), and a disc of recent studio recordings with Pere Ubu and David Thomas collaborators the Two Pale Boys that revisits and reinvents some of the Pixies' key songs. The demos disc is even sparer and rawer than The Purple Tape -- it's just Black Francis and his guitar, recording directly into a Walkman -- and the newer disc is far lusher, softer, and weirder than Frank Black's first two solo albums, but despite (or perhaps because of) their polarized approaches, they both sound fresh, vital, and a lot less predictable than most archival releases. Any fans delighted by 2002's Pixies, which presented the half of The Purple Tape that didn't make it to Come on Pilgrim, will probably be equally taken with Frank Black Francis' first disc.
Track List

Disc 1 (try tracks 1,2,3,4,6,7,8,9,10,11 and 12)

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Disc 2 (try tracks 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 and 9)

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