Al Weisel
Frank Black: Teenager of the Year
By Al Weisel
Rolling Stone, August 25, 1994
When Black Francis made the transition from member of one of the most important post-punk bands, the Pixies, to Frank Black, solo artist, his neo-eponymous debut liberated him to explore his obsessions without restraint. Unfortunately, his meditations on everything from Los Angeles to the Ramones to UFOs disappeared virtually without a trace. Undeterred, Black has followed his debut with Teenager of the Year, an even more unrelentingly idiosyncratic and solipsistic record than his first effort, an epic collection of 22 powerful songs that often equals—if not surpasses—his best work with the Pixies.
Like Los Angeles, Black's adopted home, Teenager of the Year is a sprawling amalgam of disparate elements that somehow manage to coexist. It's a motley collage of pop ideas wedged into songs that often reinvent themselves midway through. It's as if Black were possessed by the spirit of Brian Wilson channel-surfing through pop history.
The songs switch gears so much that you're never sure where you might end up, but the ride is always exhilarating. "Freedom Rock" starts off as a biting satire of rock's conformist culture ("My name is Chip/And I'm different"), then ends up as just the kind of joyous, silly rock anthem it was making fun of. "Speedy Marie," which may well be the album's best cut, begins as a prosaic country ballad, then suddenly takes flight into poetry.
Black has always proudly celebrated the cult of trash culture, and Teenager of the Year is rife with lowbrow pleasures. Whether he's singing a protest song about a discontinued video game ("Whatever Happened to Pong") or defending the Three Stooges ("Two Reelers"), Black somehow makes it sound as profound and poignant as an early-'60s pop song about dead teenagers. His defense of Curly, Larry and Moe could just as well be applied to Black himself. "Some gibberish, it is so serious/What we need is more silly men." Perhaps, as Ava Gardner once said of herself, Frank Black is "deep down a very superficial person." But he's quite proud of it, thank you.■
Al Weisel is the co-author, with Larry Frascella, of Live Fast, Die Young: The Wild Ride of Making Rebel Without a Cause, being published in October 2005.