The first surprise from the latest solo album by Frank Black is that the Pixies’ frontman has made a move (or at least a side trip) into Americana, with the alt-rock veteran playing acoustic guitar backed by session stalwarts such as Steve Cropper, Reggie Young, Buddy Miller, Spooner Oldham, and the great Dan Penn (who engineered, with Jon Tiven producing).
The second surprise is that Honeycomb includes such an idiosyncratic choice of challenging cover versions — a range that extends from the deepest of deep soul classics, “Dark End Of The Street”, to the grooviest of hippie good-vibes anthems, Sir Doug Sahm’s “Sunday Sunny Mill Valley Groove Day”.
The third surprise is that Black nails ’em. The former in particular is an interpretive revelation, as Black opts for a tone of boyish innocence tinged with resignation rather than the torment typically associated with the song. As for the latter, it marks the first time that the word “lilt” could ever be used to describe Black’s vocals; the man least likely to sing “la la la la la” has never sounded so lighthearted.
Black’s own writing ranges from the vividly surreal to the opaquely inscrutable, with “Another Velvet Nightmare” suggesting a Leonard Cohen homage, “Atom In My Heart” serving as Black’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water”, and the “Sing For Joy” finale inspiring a chorus singalong: “Sing for joy, sing for laughs.” Yet with Cropper supplying his signature Stax/Volt licks throughout, Black could be singing nonsense — and occasionally might be — and this music would still stick to the soul.