The Cult Of Ray

Today was the second offering so far from Frank Black, The Cult Of Ray, I think this was his third or fourth album and where the last album I listened to was a great surprise, an very enjoyable surprise this was like sucking porridge through a straw and as it finished as I passed the Belfry, I was happy to see it go.
Its not that it was bad, just not particularly interesting, Black was doing his post Pixies thing but at a tempo that I wasn’t particularly enamoured with. All squealy electric guitars and nonsense lyrics that didn’t really do anything for me.
On the plus side this album does contain my favourite solo Frank Black song in I don’t want to hurt you, but one swallow and all that and discarding that song there was very little meat on this bone. The final song reminded me of the Cher song, Just like Jesse James, which in all honesty, if Frank had covered that it might have been a gentle respite. As it was Frank chose to stick to topics that he knows and deals with well, namely, “bollocks”, well certainly on this album, and by bollocks I don’t mean that he has songs like the ballad of testicle joe, or John Waynes hairy saddle bags, (to be fair again if he had done songs called that it may have been a little more entertaining), no the bollocks I am referring to is the bollocks in the sentence “whats this bollocks”.
I don’t think this is the worst B, if it turns out to be the worst then it means the B’s have been very good, I just didn’t really enjoy it, 4 out of 10



The Marsist by Frank Black