Frank Black changed his name again, sort of, but that’s okay because he’s returned to his former moniker of Black Francis and has quite possibly written some of his finest work to date. In early 2008, his label, Cooking Vinyl, sent him into the studio to record a b-side for a track off of his previous album Bluefinger. What resulted from those efforts—written, recorded and mixed in seven days—is the seven-song mini-album, Svn Fngrs: a sparse effort, in terms of its production as it retains Francis’ live-to-two-track method, while remaining a strident and electrifying pure-spun big Americana rock record.
Black Francis has been known to drive hearts to their point of implosion before, and while it only lasts slightly over twenty sonic minutes, with themes revolving around “a lot of NASTY sex, NASTIER death, and beautifully strange birth,” Svn Fngrs will undoubtedly be part of your heart’s collapse. “The Seus”, Svn Fngrs opener and perhaps one of the more bizarre songs he’s written since the 1990s, finds Francis in a lyrical stream-of-consciousness, with vocals oscillating between his trademark screams and monotone drawl, as well as some sort of variation on a hip-hop vocal pattern. At times, “The Seus” summons up the angularity of Doolittle’s “Dead” from some of his earlier work—jaunty, twitchy guitars, swelling bass lines and kick-drum-snare stomps—that, oddly, set the pace for the rest of this perfect little record.
“Garbage Heap,” a heartbreaking hum of gigantic gritty guitars finds Francis comfortingly crooning with his distinctive and tender falsetto, “I’ll stay here with you / I’ll lay here with you / we’re gonna be a here a long, long time,” recalling the familiarity of earlier work with his aforementioned band. “Half Man,” “I Sent Away” and “Seven Fingers,” all less than two and a half minutes in length, confirm that the post-Pixies front man has never stopped being a rock-n-roll savant, methodically writing songs that, at times, suggest some kind of frantic desperation, or even that the oeuvre of Black Francis is some kind of cathartic exercise.
If Svn Fngrs couldn’t become more clear and definite, it climaxes with the bawdy, “When They Come To Murder Me,” where Francis boasts that he was “born in a double orgasm,” which, in the end, makes Svn Fngrs and Black Francis so much more palpable. His latest opus is a relevant success that never hangs around long enough to become humdrum. And despite its momentary episodes of jaunting intensity, as when Francis inconsolably sings, “Don’t cry, don’t cry / when they come to murder me, I’m already gone bye-bye” (repeated five, gradually impassioned times), Svn Fngrs is a soothing warm blanket, a mellifluous reminder that Black Francis, an important and prolific contemporary songwriter, never really left you to begin with.
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