What we have here is the prolific frontman from The Pixies Black Francis releasing a tonne of music – 129 tracks to be precise and spread out over 9 CD’s and presented inside an impressive 12″ hardback book. It’s eight albums from a really prolific period in his career. Francis described the records as, “ a time when I felt free to write albums, or bodies of work, that were organised under the banner of a theme or unified concept… Some of the stories are incomplete or they mutate into each other. It is not always beginning, middle, and end with a moral (thank the gods!) Sometimes they are just flashes of the unexplained. ” 

Some of the material is released for the very first time and everything has been remastered specifically for this release by Phil Kinrade at Alchemy Mastering at AIR. Also, the 40-page companion booklet features exclusive new artwork, along with an introduction and album-by-album liner notes by Black Francis himself. For fanboys and girls it’s an impressive tome, hell by anyone’s standard this is impressive.

‘Sv n F ng rs’ is a seven track mini album first released in 2007. For this album, Black Francis wrote around the idea of demigods, starting with Cú Chulainn of Eire, who apparently had seven fingers and seven toes on each hand and foot.

“It’s stripped down, minimal soloing, short, to the point, good for 20 minutes at a high rate of speed to get you the fuck out of town if only just.” – Black Francis.

Captured in 2008 on the ‘Bluefinger’ / ‘Svn Fngrs’ tour, ‘Live in Nijmegen’ features Black Francis backed by Jason Carter and Dan Schmid on ferocious performances of tracks such as ‘Threshold Apprehension’, ‘You Can’t Break A Heart And Have It’ and ‘Get Away Oil’.

In 2011 Francis teamed up with Reid Paley to record the album ‘Paley and Francis’ of mainly folk like tunes but with an edge. theres no thigh slapping happening here and the opening rough edges of ‘Curse’ is excellent and once Francis vocals hit the speakers theres an edge to proceedings. ‘On The Corner’ could be a jazzy outtake from a Tom Waites adventure. Definately a late night record and one that shows off another side of Black Francis thats for sure. A bit of Green On Red in places.

Also in 2011 Francis manged to record the album ‘The Golem’ is a soundtrack Francis wrote a few years earlier and released it at the San Francisco Film Festival released as a five disc set in 2010. it was rocked up and released in 2011 This version contains only the substantial songs, leaving out the reprises and themes that were included with the box set. I’ve never seen the film nor have I ever heard the full original five disc score so have nothing to compare it to but as a stand alone album this will very much do the balladeering of ‘The Flower Song’ is wonderful alongside the more traditional rock songs like ‘Bad News’. theres still a lot going on here as the sounds head out on a roller coaster ride and work on shuffle or as an evening set aside for a wander through the varied work of Francis.

“Every once in a while, the sound person or whoever manages to get a decent live recording in, and sometimes they luck out and the band plays pretty well, too. This is one of those nights”– Black Francis. Having all these records in one compact set with insightful liner notes is a joy. Wrapping up the resent pixies reissues and previous set of Frank Black and the Catholics collection these are good times for fans of Blacks work so dig deep and wrap up this fine body of work. all in all there is a lot of value for your money in this set and well worth investigating. My advice is to dive in people get yourself submerged in a sea of Black Francis the rewards are obvious from such a talented guy.

Buy Here

Author: Dom Daley