Album Review: Fast Man Raider Man

Sometimes you have to go back to move forward. With a solo career in danger of stalling, a reunion with the Pixies has clearly lit a creative fire within the artist formerly known as Black Francis, and Cooking Vinyl are preparing to release the third Frank Black album in as many years.

Where last year's critically applauded Honeycomb album found Black working with legendary Memphis session men, here he expands his list of collaborators to include The Band's Levon Helm, P.F. Sloan, Heartbreaker drummer Steve Ferrone, Marty Brown, Cheap Trick's Tom Petersson, Simon Kirke from Bad Company and Free, and the legendary Al Kooper. Musicians returning from Honeycomb include Booker T & The MGs' Steve Cropper, Reggie Young, Buddy Miller, Spooner Oldman and Chester Thompson.

Black's clearly relishing spending time in the studio with his heroes and, by his own admission, he was more relaxed during recording this time around: "On Honeycomb I was walking on eggshells," Black admits. "These guys are still legends, but now that we'd hung around a bit, I was more at ease".

Perhaps because of this, Black doesn't adhere to such a strict blueprint this time around. In fact, there was a degree of overlapping with the recording of this and his last album (no bad thing since Honeycomb formed a high watermark in Black's solo career), Highway To Lowdown, Sad Man's Song and Where The Wind Is Going were all originally recorded for Honeycomb but didn't quite fit into its laidback remit. Since Fast Man Raider Man lacks such a distinct tone, there was no problem including them this time around. In fact, they form three of the album's highlights.

Elsewhere, Wanderlust has Black doing Van Morrison better than Van Morrison, Fitzgerald and Elijah both hark back to the time when Black and the Pixies were turning rock music on its head, while My Terrible Ways is a true, tragic story of heroism in wake of the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina.

Fans of the screaming, shrieking Black Francis may be confounded as he moves further and further away from his Pixies heyday, but to attempt to curb a talent as endless as Black's would be a crying shame.