Honeycomb

Recorded in Nashville in four days with session legends Spooner Oldham, Reggie Young, Anton Fig, and Steve Cropper, Honeycomb is the Pixies’ Frank Black’s contribution to the alt-country genre. The stripped-down arrangements, often little more than a shuffling beat, tasteful piano, and a few spare guitar licks, resemble the modest calm of the small band sound Bob Dylan captured on John Wesley Harding. Even Black’s vocals are sedated for a settled country squire feel. Black’s out of his league on a weak read of the over-recorded Dan Penn-Chip Moman classic “Dark End of the Street” and his version of Doug Sahm’s “Sunday Sunny Mill Valley Groove Day” should send everyone searching for their Sir Douglas Quintet recordings. But Black’s own compositions (“I Burn Today,” “Strange Goodbye”) reflect heavier on his personal difficulties with love and marriage than the abstract, often surreal, work he’s recorded in the past both with the Pixies and as an electrified solo act. The quiet life becomes him.