Odds and Ends 013

As a child growing up in Birmingham, AL, I used the word "ni**er" without knowing what a black person was.  I also used the word "polack" thinking it meant a stupid person, without knowing it was an epithet for Polish immigrants.  And I'm not saying once or twice.  I used those words A LOT.

Apropos of absolutely nothing: Milo, if you’re out there, that story about the bartender you told a while back when I was chattering means more to me now than it did at the time. It’s incisive, I've realised.

NOTE: MSN seems to have a problem with me posting comprehensively about the new Frank album, presumably for the same reasons Target is refusing to sell it. So in order to get this up here I’ve removed all the track names and replaced them with their numbers on the playlist. Sorry if this requires extra effort on your part, and watch out when you decide to post about same.

Frank 2.0 just keeps growing and growing. Don't believe the "spacey" or "less focused" hype -- all kinds of careful definitions and spot-on touches announce themselves well before you get bored, and nostalgia's focus was the exact same thing: nothing less or more than every one of Frank's problems, song by song. On Orange he's reconciling himself to certain improvements (while nailing the universal perspective, as on the perfect -- perfect -- #7) while tackling and overcoming (rather than merely crying, which is okay if he does it like he does on the negligibly flawed #14) about new ones -- playing around with language and imagery so that it's not so forthcoming as the first one, but never in a way that compromises his maturity or wit or even forthrightness when it counts. He's just in a vague place right now -- he's entering a period of major emotional ambiguity not aided by a sexuality shift, though even in that case he ends up sounding ebullient despite his lack of resolve. And the music, oh God, the music -- summed up perfectly by the exquisite "PLEA-A-A-SURE" he gives forth with as he falls into his male lover on the astonishing #15. These blissed-out futureworld textures are far less arid and more fulfilling than anything Radiohead ever came up with even if Frank knows what to take from loving them. That keyboard hook on #11 could sustain me for the entirety of the record, but there's so much more -- the herky swing of #13, the delicate synthchord pastures of #2, the slowburning Rogers Nelson bob 'n' weave of the incredible #5, the quiet storm of #16, the entrancing surrealism of #10. Not being able to play guitar like Van Halen hasn't stopped him from recruiting those who can play simultaneously like hell and with incredible restraint, in little bits that nearly make the record. So it's all there for you. What was it Christgau said about After the Gold Rush? Pleasant (i.e. soft) and hard at the same time? Bear that little bit in mind when delving deeper into this one. If you're anything like me (you're not but I'm pretty keen), you won't want to stop playing it to live in something again or to see where else you can stay.

As for Pitchfork's embrace, is it time for another conversation about the Ira P. Robbins-ness of their tastes or have we heard that one enough? Frank is no less black (or more African) than Prince or Stevie Wonder, both of whom he sounds an awful lot like in different spots on this, but, you know. And it's not like My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy didn't play into a certain latent racism on the part of some of its less enlightened embracers, those who were slower on the one that contained the brilliant "Crack Music". Nor is it likely you'll see Spoek Mathambo higher on any of P4K's lists, though admittedly both the invigorating M.I.A. rip of Mshini Wam and the glorious nightmare of Father Creeper, the latter possibly better than My Beautiful, don't quite call me back the way Frank's new one does. Maybe that's because rather than inviting me to hang out forever and making the prospect seem permanently fulfilling, they get me a little edgy -- sort of like the more diffuse (if conceptually fascinating) Nombolo One, which is weird for a record so open to for-the-gut melodics it ends with a f*cking snatch from The Well-Tempered Clavier. Anyway -- don't let Frank disappoint you away too early. He's made a startlingly deep, rewarding record. It could be an A+.