Frank Black and The Catholics
Pistolero
1999, SpinART Records
Every seasoned songwriter lifer has that thing that they can’t get away from. Maybe it doesn’t show up in everything that they do, but it will always call to them and they will return to it eventually.
For Jagger and Richards, it’s black American blues. For McCartney, it’s old escapist happy stuff that comforted people through past Depressions and wars. For Dylan, it’s the mystical side of traditional folk story-songs.
For Frank Black, it’s punk rock. No, he’s never been in a punk band, but that’s not important. Keith Richards didn’t hone his craft anywhere near the Mississippi Delta, either. What matters is that Black is clearly a punk product. Born in 1965, he’s the perfect age for the early wave to have made a life-altering impression on him. When he started his own band, he borrowed as much as he could. The Pixies were never a punk band, but there was a little taste of it in everything about them, from the surface details of their music to their aversion to all rock cliches of the time.
Punks move forward and Black continued his maverick ways on computer-assisted solo albums that still confound some people today.
When he left the big labels for humbler independents in his Catholics period, he approached things like he was on SST in 1984. Like The Minutemen before them, The Catholics threw themselves into the idea that rock is a blue collar job. A band doesn’t tour to promote a record; rather, they make a record to promote a tour. You don’t take a year off. You stay busy. You go out and play. Big cities, small towns, any place that will have you. You travel in a van that you load and unload yourself. You have no expectations of “hitting it big”. You get your kicks from just doing the work.
Black not only adapted well to this, but was inspired by it. See how prolific he got with the Catholics. This all seemed to appeal to his inner punk.
That’s why I say the Catholics era is Frank Black’s punkest period.
And Pistolero might be their punkest album because it just fucking rocks.
Continue reading “Frank Black-O-Rama! #14: PISTOLERO”
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