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Teenager of the Year by: Frank Black

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Rating: - Elegant

An elegant and lively music with a good beat. I would say that 80% of the songs are good, and there are many. It's rock music no doubt.

Rating: - 15 years

This masterpiece is now 15 years old, and it still surprises me every time I listen to it.

After compromizing in Pixies (sweet results, I admit) FB found perfection in his second solo album. The painful truth is that he's never been this precise in his melodies, this funny in his weird lyrics, or this beautiful on the album cover, ever again.

It's been 15 years but I'm listening to it once more. You should too, if you have any interest in pop/rock music with tempo shifts, sci fi lyrics, and plain upbeat fun!

Rating: - Dumbstruck in love with this

This was the first album I ever thought of as a masterpiece. Beyond beauty, this is Frank at his chaotic best. A severly underated collection of sublime songs.

Rating: - From the paddle to the paddle/from the side to the side...

There's no doubt that this is FB's best album, his only solo effort to compare favourably with the output of his former alias Mr Francis (that's not to say that his other solo albums aren't worth checking out). Its a sprawling, protean effort- an eclectic and defiantly odd-ball collection. At times it sounds like The Fall (Whatever Happened To Pong?), at other moments more like Dire Straits (Calistan, Speedie Marie), but it NEVER sounds much like the Pixies. The sound is cleaner and poppier, smoothing off the edges of the Pixies' abrasiveness, but the weirdness, the bug-eyed humour (and the sheer quality) remains.

Despite its sprawling nature, this is nonetheless a very accessible and remarkably consistent album. I don't agree at all with people who consider the album uneven. Only the cod-reggae of "Fiddle Riddle" has me reaching for the skip button. But its true that Frank Black's taste occasionally fails him- Lyle Workman's awful, squiddly guitar solos on the otherwise excellent Two Reelers and Ole Mulholland stray too far into tasteless 70s rock territory for my liking. But that's what makes the guy interesting- he clearly doesn't give a monkey's about being cool or fashionable, and its this refreshing eclecticism which makes this singulalrly odd collection one of the most under-rated albums of the 1990s.

Rating: - If you are a Pixies Fan, Buy Now !

Teenager of the year is the only solo Frank Black album you should get. It's very well structured with it's songwriting and still is as dark as any of the Pixies' work.

Best Tracks:-Headache,White Noise Maker,Space is going to do me good, Calistan and Ole Mullohand.

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