Shop Ireland

Teenager of the Year by: Frank Black

Click to tell a friend about this item...

More Product Details...

Review Pages: 1 2 3 Next »

Click here to add a review!

Average rating -

Rating: - just as good as any pixies album

Frank Black carries on his previous band's ability to make great music.

Stand-out tracks are Headache & White-noise maker, but all the tracks add something to the feel of the album.

There's not many artists that put 22 tracks on an album without having a few fillers, fortunately Frank Black is an exception. All 22 tracks are fantastic.

If you like great music this is definetely an album worth adding to your collection

Rating: - This IS the best album of all time.....

...and I feel no shame in saying so. Frank has the best lyrics, the best tunes and the best backing band in history, and this 22 song album is where it all comes together. Its a lovely big mess of a thing, stylistically as varied as hell yet somehow it forms a coherent whole. Time will prove me and my fellow reviewers right. This IS the best. You betcha.

Rating: - OK, so Frank Black IS KING...

A slight bias given the fact that I regard Frank Black as the greatest songwriter ever, but this album perhaps encapsulates why I believe this.

This album is striking in the fact that it contains 22 songs and NONE of them sound like filler. People talk of reinvention over years with regards to artists like Bowie, but Frank reinvents himself several times over the course of the album. Side 2 on vinyl (Headache to Fiddle Riddle) is possibly the strongest sequence of songs ever recorded.

Whilst this album may win few friends amongst those who expect a constant theme (see Dog In The Sand, Cult of Ray, etc for a more consistent theme) for true fans of music it must be unsurpassable. His lyrics and songwriting have never sounded so vibrant and exciting as they do on this album. It is by far my favourite album ever recorded.

Rating: - Get a white noise maker and turn it up to ten

The Pixies were about as cool as it's possible for a band to be, and so it was at first difficult to stomach the invention of Frank Black, suddenly sounding like their dad.

For all the good things that can be said about the first (eponymous) solo album, it certainly invited those unfavourable comparisons by sticking too closely to the Pixies formula. Teenager of the Year, on the other hand, sounds happy to be flabby and uncool. He seems to have relaxed, forgotten about the Pixies, and just doing what he wants to do.

Consequently, there is a treacherous MOR quality to the record, and one can't help lamenting what he might have done with the same material had he recorded it five years previously. That said, the songs are some of his most accomplished ever: fun, writerly and irresistibly melodic.

The subject matter is as scattergun and predictable as ever-- UFOs, the joys of music, Pong, sci-fi television-- but it's nice to see the inclusion of a couple of mature yet idiosyncratic love songs. 'Sir Rockaby' will make you cry with a stupid smile on your face.

Seven years after its release, I cannot stop myself from bursting into song along with this record, and that's its real power. It's a sprawling songbook of utterly unique, goofball vignettes, stuffed full of inventiveness and performed with a straight face. Who else could rhyme 'potlach,' 'sasquatch' and 'mismatch' in three successive lines? And who hasn't heard this album without reaching for the dictionary?

All his classic vocal personae are out in force too. He shifts from his Ramones snarl ('Thallassocracy') to his plaintive Neil Young impression ('(I Want to Live on an) Abstract Plain') within the first five minutes. It's this constant change in vocal gear that supplies the emotional element missing from the songs themselves.

If there's a problem, it's in length. Judicious editing of the song-list from 22 to somewhere nearer 15 might make it a sharper, more satisfying experience. But then where do you cut? He wrote this album on a creative roll, and everybody I know would argue the toss for different songs. Which, I suppose, only goes to show the quality of the quantity.

Sadly, despite the occasional song to hit the mark, he's never bettered this album. But I know I'll be singing these songs for the rest of my life, and for a tenner, that seems like a real bargain.

Rating: - Frank Black

Only a man like Frank Black could make an album THIS GOOD and yet give it the worst pictures of the man i have ever seen. However strangely this adds to the whole appeal of the thing. From the first listen of this album you know its special(far better than "frank black-1992).The energy is back,the genius behind "trompe le monde" has struck again. The best thing about this is the seeming range of influences within. Headache sounds like a little bob dylan whilst calistan,direstraits!

All in all a wonderful purchase for any true music fan. It may seem as if the world is ignoring Frank Black at the moment (couldnt even find a review of his recent gig with the catholics),but who gives a shit they can keep eminem and limp bizkit. ILL CHOOSE FRANK

Review Pages: 1 2 3 Next »