Cooking Vinyl
2007
Bluefinger
About This Album
Bluefinger could be seen as a return to form, but whose return to form is it? This is the first music Charles Kitteridge Thompson IV has made as Black Francis since his days with the Pixies, after more than 15 years of releasing albums as Frank Black. The man of many names said he was inspired to go back to Black Francis while recording "Threshold Apprehension," the bonus track for the Frank Black retrospective 93-03. That song -- which also appears here -- and the rest of Bluefinger was inspired by Herman Brood, a Dutch musician, painter, and poet whose fondness for sex, drugs, and rock & roll led to lifelong health and addiction problems, and ultimately, his 2001 suicide at age 54. The switch back to the mysterious Black Francis persona might have helped channel Brood's lust for life -- after all, with the Pixies, Francis excelled at telling twisted, fragmented songs inspired by the Bible and his messed-up id like "Dead" and "Nimrod's Son" -- and Bluefinger has some of the most aggressive, decadent songs Thompson has written under any of his aliases. "Threshold Apprehension" is joyfully self-destructive, shouting about "Grand Marnier and a packet full of speed" and being "junk sick" like they're both fantastic, while the color-coded debauchery of "Tight Black Rubber" is a skuzzy cousin to Black's "Ten Percenter," and actually is fantastic.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,3,4,5 and 8)

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