Frank Black has earned the right to do whatever the hell he wants, and he unfortunately seems to know it. The man who brought you the Pixies and, by extension, the alternative rock boom of the early 90s, took four days out of his busy schedule touring with his triumphantly reunited old band to record in Nashville with such legendary session men as Steve Cropper and Spooner Oldham. The result is Honeycomb, as album that has its inspired moments but ultimately comes off like something of a vanity project, with Black tackling a midpoint between classic country and classic r&b;, winding up with a sort of adult contemporary album full of lyrics about shrimp and selkies, those half-seal/half-human creatures of Orkney legend.
To his credit, Black seems genuinely excited to be playing with his heroes, and he's invested in the material, as always, but the backing definitely has the ultra-competent feeling of a session rather than a band really gelling. Likewise, Black's written several great songs, but he may not actually be the best guy to sing them, as his voice has a tendency to die out on some of the more ambitious melodies. For instance, "Strange Goodbye" is a masterfully written duet that could have easily come from the Stax hit factory in the late-60s, but Black and his ex-wife Jean (they were still married at the time) here aren't a compelling pair-- ironic considering it's written about their impending break-up.
The record's two peaks are actually covers of Dan Penn & Chips Moman's "Dark End of the Street" and key Black influence Doug Sahm's "Sunday Sunny Mill Valley Groove Day". The former finds Black doing a pretty good job with a tricky classic soul melody, while the latter is an exuberant, uptempo country-rock tune that the whole band seems to enjoy playing. The third cover, "Song of the Shrimp", is a bizarre ballad about a shrimp that leaves his parents for New Orleans, not realizing where the shrimp boat is taking him. Black, of course, turns in his own share of odd lyrics, peaking on "Strange Goodbye" and bottoming out these lines from the opening of "Another Velvet Nightmare": "Today I felt my heart slide into my belly/ So I puked it up with liquor/ And I slept right where I lay."
Elsewhere, Cropper livens up "My Life Is in Storage" with richly phrased guitar solo and Black spikes his closing exhortation to "Sing for Joy" with tales of alcoholism and murder. The sum of it all is a bit less than what you might expect from the parts. Black has strangely proven himself an accomplished writer of songs that would sound great in the hands of a soul singer and a house band, but he's also proven that he's not necessarily always the right singer for his songs.
