Bluefinger could be seen as a return to form, but whose return to form is it? This is the first music
Charles Kitteridge Thompson IV has made as
Black Francis since his days with
the Pixies, after more than 15 years of releasing albums as
Frank Black. The man of many names said he was inspired to go back to
Black Francis while recording "Threshold Apprehension," the bonus track for the
Frank Black retrospective 93-03. That song -- which also appears here -- and the rest of
Bluefinger was inspired by
Herman Brood, a Dutch musician, painter, and poet whose fondness for sex, drugs, and rock & roll led to lifelong health and addiction problems, and ultimately, his 2001 suicide at age 54. The switch back to the mysterious
Black Francis persona might have helped channel
Brood's lust for life -- after all, with
the Pixies,
Francis excelled at telling twisted, fragmented songs inspired by the Bible and his messed-up id like "Dead" and "Nimrod's Son" -- and
Bluefinger has some of the most aggressive, decadent songs
Thompson has written under any of his aliases. "Threshold Apprehension" is joyfully self-destructive, shouting about "Grand Marnier and a packet full of speed" and being "junk sick" like they're both fantastic, while the color-coded debauchery of "Tight Black Rubber" is a skuzzy cousin to
Black's "Ten Percenter," and actually is fantastic. "My baby's so bad, I nearly killed her!" is an almost
Pixies-worthy depiction of weird sex, and even when you're not sure exactly what is going on in the song, it sounds like dangerous fun. However, no matter how much
Thompson insists that
Bluefinger is a
Black Francis album, it's still far closer to his work as
Frank Black than to anything he did with
the Pixies. He just doesn't sound the way he used to, even though his scream is still one of the all-time great rock vocals and pops up all over the album, especially effectively on the cover of
Brood's own "You Can't Break a Heart and Have It." This isn't a bad thing, though; as
Frank Black, he has become an excellent, if slightly more traditional, songwriter and storyteller, and that serves character sketches as diverse as the death-defying "Test Pilot Blues" and punk love story "Discotheque 36" well.
Bluefinger's range also feels more
Frank than
Francis. "Captain Pasty"'s revved-up rocker would have fit on
Dog in the Sand or
Teenager of the Year, while the title track has a compassion and gentleness to it that would've been wildly out of place on a
Pixies album. Attaching the
Black Francis moniker to this album might ratchet up expectations too high for rabid
Pixies fans, but
Bluefinger is a good
Charles Thompson album -- it's still really enjoyable to hear him have fun and rock out, no matter what name he chooses to use. ~ Heather Phares