Black Francis – NonStopErotik
Cooking Vinyl Records (Release Date: March 30, 2010)
Review by Adam Perry for the Albuquerque Weekly Alibi
“I don’t need to have some money / and I don’t need to have some friends / I don’t need to have somebody new / when I go down on you.” Whether NonStopErotik qualifies as “Frank Black’s sex album” pretty much speaks for itself. More importantly, the gigantic-voiced singer/songwriter’s darkly rocking new LP is certainly proof that, like Duke Ellington, music is his mistress. Like the sum of Black Francis’ solo career, NonStopErotik is stylistically all over the place, misleadingly starting with unexceptional alt-rock harkening back to 90’s bands like the Toadies and then spanning sexy Ween-esque synth ballads, bug-eyed surf noir, and explosive rock that could only be called sweet noise. “We all got wheels to take ourselves away…come on wheels, take this boy away,” Francis sings on “Wheels,” and you sometimes get to wondering what the legendary Pixies front-man’s personal life is like, spending many sleepless nights recording this debaucherous longplay in Brooklyn, L.A and London. In the album’s press release, Francis wrote “I want to be all inside you…sucking at the only thing that matters”; NonStopErotik gets my vote of approval, but don’t blame me if you feel violated.
Adam Perry 