What we have here is a project. Two discs, one with a fresh faced Charles Thompson, soon to take the name Black Francis and the other with an aged and haughty Frank Black. The entire package is a series of contrasts meeting one another. The artwork is swimming in nostalgia with dark and blurry pictures of young Charles, while the liner notes are filled with the arrogance and apathy that has come to be associated with the Frank Black of today. Most visibly, the title, Frank Black Francis is a combination of Charles’ stage names (“if it’s good enough for Iggy Pop, it’s good enough for me”). A lot of bands release demo versions of early work, often as second discs to reissued or remastered albums. What, many have asked, is the point of rerecording beloved and perfect songs? Frank addresses this in the liner notes, and surely every journalist will bring up this idea of “messing with the gospel” and weigh in on whether or not the project was successful. I suspect that aside from some added publicity for the upcoming Pixies reunion, and yes, maybe some extra cash – and okay, maybe even a chance at further proving his own genius – that Frank Black had some alterior motives, less vindictive. For a songwriter with over 13 albums, an obsession with live-to-two-track recording and no pesky bass players to compete with, I believe that Frank Black is the type of guy that fanatically produces recordings. Ryan Adams and Elvis Costello have been accused of this and often get trashed in the press for their unrelenting recording behavior. Frank is just as guilty. Take for example the unreleased 2000 sessions known as Sunday Sunny Mill Valley Groove Day, an entire album’s worth of material unreleased only to float b-side obscurity heaven. That year he took 14 other songs and compiled it into a b-side collection called Oddballs, on which he claims to have left plenty of songs out and was even tempted to re-record. The first disc, labeled Black Francis Demo was taken from the cassette recorded to get an idea of what Come On Pilgrim would sound like before they started sessions in Fort Apache studios in Roxbury. For those who are fans of Come on Pilgrim, is there a point to owning a copy of the demo? Well, for artists as prolific as Frank Black or Elvis Costello these demo versions of songs that you think are already amazing can let you into their little bedroom, where they’re coming up with ideas about caribous and little triggers. I’d listen to these recordings the same way I’d listen to disc two of This Year’s Model, over a cup of tea, on a long drive, or reading the Sunday paper. There are quite a few songs that never appeared on formal albums and it’s cool to hear them in the context and time period from where they came. This is especially true for “Subbacultcha” which wasn’t released until the last pixies album which was far different form Come On Pilgrim, yet re-recorded to gel with Trompe Le Monde. I assumed that when re-recording the early songs that they would sound like Frank Black covering Black Francis. Instead, I hear more influence in the production from the The Pale Boys (associates of David Thomas of Pere Ubu). The second disc is all tied together with the production as one streaming thread. I contend that they weren’t messing with the gospel, they were merely altering the mood. This recording is labeled “treated disc,” and I think that makes perfect sense. It is very dark, yet there are trumpets. The songs are 10 and 15 years old but sound completely contemporary. Nimrod’s Son, now a trumpet song, sounds in the line of a Tom Waits funeral piece while “Into The White” and “Subbacultcha” are extremely sexual, dark, and dramatic. “Cactus,” an often overlooked song off Surfer Rosa really does well in this medium. I saw David Bowie perform the song and was really pleased with how well he accentuated the somewhat sadistic lyrics. In the context of odd and muted sounds, the lines “bloody your hands on a cactus tree/Wipe it on your dress and send it to me” have never sounded so good. Similarly, “Wave of Mutilation,” a song written in the fantasy-hope of more Charles Manson/Beach Boys collaborations, is perfectly suited for a treatment such as this. The most distinct contrast of the project is, of course, in the recordings themselves. Worried that the demo would only suffice “über-fans,” Frank added the second disc. I’ll give him credit for being arrogant enough to touch the old recordings, and an even larger pat on the back for making amends with (bass player) Kim Deal, for the upcoming tour.