Back Porch
2005
Honeycomb
About This Album
Leave it to Frank Black to have his cake and eat it, too: by releasing Honeycomb, his Nashville-recorded collaboration with session legends including Steve Cropper, Anton Fig, and Spooner Oldham, while his reunion tour with the Pixies continued, he could follow his bliss and please his longtime fans. Those who thought Black's later work sounded like the output of a bad bar band probably won't get Honeycomb either, but at least the reunited Pixies should satisfy their longings to hear him shriek about surrealism and incest like he did in the good old days. On paper, Black might not seem like the likeliest fit with Cropper, Fig, et al., but the early-rock roots of the Pixies' mutated surf-punk-pop and the country and roots rock flirtations of his later career suggest otherwise (and "In the Midnight Hour," which Cropper co-wrote, was one of the first songs that Black ever played live). Honeycomb's songs feel tailored to the experience of recording with these musicians in this location, and have a sophistication that Black might not have been able to get with another group of players: the affably drunken "Another Velvet Nightmare" floats by on Oldham's elegantly wasted piano lines, and the band as a whole makes the cover of Dan Penn and Chips Moman's "Dark End of the Street" that much more soulful and genuine.
Track List (try tracks 2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 and 11)

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