Black has paid his dues as innovator, rebel, indie darling and whatever else critics (rightly) loved him for. Now, he’s padding through this stage of his career like a wayward dog on the scent of something pretty special but as yet, beyond our ken.
‘Fast Man Raider Man’ is a rich, uneven double album of songs recorded in a series of mammoth sessions with a host of guesting musicians and will inevitably fall foul of some critics for, well, for not being the Pixies, but which nevertheless has a real sense of being a personally satisfying project for Black who includes everything from bouncing band work outs, to stripped down gothic-folk ballads recorded on porches at night and incorporating chirping cicadas into the backing, to straight out rockers such as ‘Johnny Barleycorn’ and ‘Elijah’ – dark and beguiling and reminiscent of past glories.
The album is a more confident continuation of last year’s ‘Honeycomb’, where echoes of the Black’s adored former band the Pixies were all but subsumed in arrangements reminiscent of Neil young and even Steve Miller.
‘Fast Man Raider Ma’n has more layered arrangements, country inflected tracks, tracks adorned with smoky sax and squirling organs etc, a glorious mess of growling torch songs, boogie woogie and Black’s own brand of barbed and twisted rock.
The first track, ‘If Your Poison Gets You’ feels like Tom Waits with its brushes and walking bass and a grizzled vocal. On top of this is an exquisitely tricky rhythm that becomes almost emblematic of Black’s desire to plough his own furrow come what may. ‘In the Time of My Ruin’ has his typical ingredients – oblique lyrics and driving guitar under deep, droll vocals, while the duet with country singer Marty Brown on the cover of ‘Dirty Old Town’ builds into some enjoyably raucous choruses.
‘My Terrible Ways’ perhaps represents the patchy quality of the album – musically, it seems empty, unfinished and Black sings in a falsetto that sounds weak and unable to grasp the notes… and yet, through it all there’s a power in the bitter sweet tale of one man’s redemption amidst the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina. And, for all the criticisms the album has received for its length, unevenness, whatever, it still rolls on and does so because anyone as inherently cool, interesting and interested as Black only needs to open his mouth to produce purple ribbons of sound, dusted poetry and songs that shimmer.
Fast Man/Raider Man is self-indulgent, but in all the best possible ways, and is a bigger album for it.