“The thing about California is if you just look at its surface, you might have a very bad impression. But you have to look a little harder. When you live there, you start to get into the history and consume it all. You embody it.”
The man born Charles Thompson, known to most as Frank Black and to legions of PIXIES fans as Black Francis, is sat in a quiet apartment adjoining RAK Studios in central London, an acoustic guitar resting nearby. PIXIES, on the brink of releasing their tenth studio album, are back in town recording new material. But for the next hour, Black’s mind is elsewhere – firmly rooted in 1994, when he released ‘Teenager of the Year’. A zig-zagging, genre-flipping opus, it stands as one of the most audacious records of its time. Far from merely navigating life post-PIXIES, Black was reimagining his craft with a boldness that bordered on scandalous.
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With its delightfully anarchic artwork featuring Black-as-prom-queen, ‘Teenager’ takes PIXIES’ script-flipping essence to extreme heights – then mutates it into something almost unrecognisable. To mark its 30th anniversary, Black, alongside his original backing band on the album, will honour it by performing it in full for the first time on a special tour early next year, including a one-off show at the London Palladium. To accompany this, 4AD is reissuing a newly remastered edition of the LP – a fitting tribute to a work that pole-vaulted past expectations, despite initial mixed reactions, to become pure-cut testament to unshackled vision and conviction.
Musically, the double album courses with an unpredictability matched only by the arc of its creation. Recorded across multiple studios in California, the sessions were punctuated by forest fires, the 1994 Northridge earthquake and even an unexpected visit from Eric Idle, who offered unsolicited advice on the songs. It’s not hard to see how those same conditions contributed to its shapeshifting mastery – a labyrinth of riffs, grand-scale storytelling and emotional jolts across 22 tracks. With it, ‘Teenager’ hits like a long-exposure shot of an artist untethered and in full flight.
After PIXIES’ initial split, Black had already ventured into solo territory with 1993’s ‘Frank Black’. When he began work on its follow-up, he was determined to push much further. “I had just made the first Frank Black record, and making the second one, I was really starting to feel kind of cocky,” he says. “The label back in London [4AD] was leaving me alone. I think they had other things going on. I don’t know if they forgot about me, but they were 6,000 miles away, and they never visited me on ‘Teenager’. That was fine by me.”
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As well as keyboardist and producer Eric Drew Feldman – whose inimitable resume includes Captain Beefheart, Pere Ubu, The Residents and PIXIES 1.0 on ‘Trompe Le Monde’ – Black assembled an elite band including guitarist Lyle Workman and drummer Nick Vincent, and his old Pixies bandmate Joey Santiago on a handful of tracks. If the process was unyielding, the outcome was alchemical.
“One of the reasons we ended up making a 22-song record is that I would show up every day with a new batch of half-baked ideas – kind of cannabis-infused and caffeinated,” he says. “They’d be these complicated arrangements, at least for my playing style, and I’d say, ‘Okay, I got another one.’ And the band, used to working with someone like Todd Rundgren, would say, ‘No problem, man.’ It was like having a Lamborghini I could drive as fast as I wanted every day. It was amazing.”
As in PIXIES’ pomp, the nocturnal approach that Black, Feldman and co. took to recording lent a certain why-the fuck-not? energy to the album. “We worked at night. We were still young enough that we tended to go to the studio at night and stay up late. So I didn’t have to follow the traffic patterns. I could spend my free time doing whatever the hell I wanted – just driving around. I didn’t have kids then, so it was like, ‘Let’s go to Vegas. Let’s drive to San Francisco. Let’s go to the mountains. Let’s go to the sea, the desert, or where Frank Sinatra used to eat.’”
That same sense of exploration, of chasing what the landscape had to offer, defines the album. A vital element of ‘Teenager’ is Boston-born Black’s profound connection to California – a state he reveres and excavates in his art like few others. Having moved there in the early 1990s with his girlfriend, many years after growing up in L.A., he quickly immersed himself in its endless contradictions. “It’s just so vast,” he says. “And there’s a lot of history there. So I just began to consume it all. There’s the Spanish missions, the water wars, the Native American tribes who lived there long before the Europeans arrived. It’s all connected, and when you understand that, you start to love it all. I think that’s reflected a lot in ‘Teenager of the Year.’”
“People go west to find their pot of gold or whatever, and they end up in California,” he adds. “You see a lot of people who are kind of lost, some homeless, some just a little crazy. They took too many drugs or whatever and are stuck, wandering around in these little beach towns. It’s hard for them to get out; it’s so far from anywhere else. It’s an end-of-the-line kind of place – next stop, Japan. Then you’ve got people coming from Japan, China, the Philippines, finally landing in America and doing their thing in California. It’s this weird meeting of places, with some people making it big and others not making it at all. From an anthropological point of view, it’s just beautiful – so rich in languages, cultures and all the psychology that comes with it all.”
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It’s this singular collision of lives and landscapes that ‘Teenager’ captures so vividly. It teems with references to the Golden State’s unique history and mythos, ‘Calistan’ meditating on the El Camino Real, the historic road connecting California’s Spanish missions, while ‘Ole Mulholland’ pays tribute to William Mulholland, the controversial L.A. water magnate immortalized in Chinatown. Black treats these stories as mythic, reshaping them with an insider’s insight and an outsider’s awe. This is storytelling as alchemy – California’s history and dreams distilled through a special songwriting lens. “Even just the water history of California is fascinating,” Black says. “Mulholland was like a mythic figure. The politics, the power struggles – it’s all there.”
That same sense of mythic storytelling extended beyond California’s landscapes and into Black’s influences, some a Sepulveda Blvd-long stretch from his larynx-tearing roots in PIXIES. “At the time, I was really into Freddy Fender – a Tex-Mex guy from Corpus Christi, Texas, who had his heyday in the ’70s but was basically doing ’50s music,” Black recalls. “The first time I saw him was in Reno. His opening act was an elephant – no security barrier, just this huge fucking elephant right in front of you. It was crazy. These guys, with the hair and the belt buckles like license plates, were amazing. Freddy Fender was a big one for me. On ‘Sir Rockaby,’ I was totally trying to sing like him.”
It’s subtle but this connection to older, often overlooked stars reflects Black’s broader fascination with cultural intersections. “Everyone has their L.A. period,” he says. “Maybe they last a year, maybe they stay forever, but they’re all there – actors, musicians, everyone. The weather’s good, and there’s Vegas. And then there’s the El Camino Real, the road the conquistadores built for the California missions. There are about 22 missions, stretching from Baja, Mexico, to the Oregon border. That road is still there – Route 101. It’s all connected.”
This fixation on landscapes, endless spaces, and their psychic connection to the people within them echoes like a lonely, distant night train – a thread that runs through some PIXIES’ best work, from ‘Motorway to Roswell’ to ‘The Happening,’ and finds full bloom here. It’s an obsession that was partly shaped by a visionary 1990 book, City of Quartz by the late, great Mike Davis. “That was a big influence on me,’ he says. “I had a well-worn copy and it all made perfect sense to me. Davis really had a lot of enthusiasm for all of the beauty and also all of the ugliness of California. When you understand it’s both, you somehow appreciate it all.”
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Whether dreaming of deepest space or tracing the vast terrains of California, Black’s ability to mine these landscapes – both physical and emotional – remains one of his defining preoccupations. Equally, ‘Teenager’ is an album that rewards deep immersion; every listen unveils some hidden detail – a sly lyric, a chord shift that feels like private levitation. Over 63 minutes of endless shapeshifting, Black’s steadfast refusal to take the path of least resistance serves him well.
“I remember PIXIES’ first record [‘Come on Pilgrim’] came out in 1987,” he says. “We were still living in Boston. Joey was at a party attended by mostly students of the Berklee College of Music. He’d brought a test pressing or something of the record to the party, and they were listening to it. I don’t know if the other students knew that it was our record, but one student was like, ‘Oh, they’re wrong. They’re playing wrong.’ Joey was like, ‘Yeah, but… it exists. It’s there. It’s a record. We’re listening to it. It may be wrong, but it has a station.’”
“So, I guess my station is working with what I’ve got. There’s a lot of barre chording – minors, majors, maybe a seventh, maybe a sus – but not a lot of complicated chords. I’m not trained in that way. If you’re not very well musically trained, like myself, you kind of make do. So I’ve probably developed some other things that are nuanced in ways that others might not notice as much as I do.”
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This instinct for working within limitations, refining simplicity into something extraordinary, runs through the more luminous peaks of ‘Teenager’. The perfect pop of single ‘Headache’ dazzles with its harmonic sleight of hand. ‘Sir Rockaby’ and ‘Fazer Eyes’ swoon as timeless anthems, rivalling PIXIES’ very best. Fittingly, the album received a one-line review in Seattle’s The Rocket back in 1994: “Eats entire Electric Light Orchestra.” Towering praise though it was, it still feels like an understatement listening to latter-album peaks like the organ-driven ‘Superabound,’ an all-time Charles Thompson triumph, and ‘White Noise Maker,’ a synth-pop fever dream steeped in high drama. Elsewhere, ‘Pure Denizen of the Citizens Band,’ with its unhinged 12-bar blues, flaunts a brilliance that feels both chaotic and deeply intentional.
The album’s sound, coloured as much by the chaos of its creation – earthquakes, fires, and all – as by its boundless ambition, carries a scope to match its sweeping lyrical themes. With his band, not least Feldman on keys, bass, and synth throughout, Black doubles down, making even the most demented peaks of ‘Doolittle’ feel, well, almost tame in comparison. It’s as if he distilled pure conviction into 22 tracks, each one daring you to keep up.
It’s breakneck from the off, with ‘Whatever Happened to Pong?’ and ‘Thalassocracy’ coursing with fierce, defiant energy – all but giving the famously breathless first half of ‘Trompe Le Monde’ a run for its money. Elsewhere, Black’s long-standing fascination with the cosmic comes to the forefront. ‘The Vanishing Spies’ stands as a gorgeous high point, recounting the ill-fated case of Phobos 2, a Russian space probe lost while surveying the moons of Mars. Meanwhile, ‘Big Red’ envisions a botched attempt at terraforming the Red Planet, blending Beach Boys-inspired harmonies with themes of ambition and failure.
“Eric was very open to my sort of pontificating about what this was all about,” Black says, reflecting on the creative kinship that helped shape ‘Teenager’. “But musicians don’t usually question whoever’s got the mic. A lot of times, they don’t even know what you’re on about – they’re focused on their own job and keeping the peace. In PIXIES, Joey would sometimes say about a song he’d been playing for 30 years, ‘Oh, I didn’t know it was about that.’ That wasn’t his domain and that’s fine. He has other things to be thinking of. But a producer wants you to be a method actor. They want to get to the core of it all, like, ‘What’s it all about, baby?’ By then, I’d made five records with PIXIES and had just enough experience dealing with producers to have those kinds of conversations with Eric. And he was fully on board.”
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That shared vision made the album’s sprawling ambition possible, but its reach was hindered by practical challenges. It wasn’t widely toured upon its release, a reality shaped by both logistics and economics. “I mean this in the most complimentary way, but my band was kind of expensive,” Black says. “These guys were incredibly talented, very studied musicians, and in demand for recording sessions. They earned what they were worth, but I couldn’t afford to go on the road with them so much. My star had dimmed a bit after I broke up PIXIES. Like anybody, you break up your band and unless you’re a really hot commodity, you’re eating humble pie. And it was humble pie a-plenty.”
One notable exception was a six-week U.S. tour opening for none other than the Ramones, made possible by Joey Ramone’s sheer determination. “Joey loved my song ‘I Heard Ramona Sing’ and couldn’t believe someone had written a song about his band. To me, it was the most natural thing in the world, but it meant a lot to him. He kept calling my manager, saying, ‘What if we pay him two thousand dollars? Three thousand?’ They were playing clubs – they didn’t have the budget for this. But Joey just kept upping the offer. His managers were pissed. I think they said, ‘Five thousand dollars? You fucking motherfuckers!’ But Joey insisted.”
The tour itself was as smooth as the album recording. “I didn’t want to crowd their bus, so I drove everywhere with my girlfriend. Their schedule was so nuts, I was constantly driving a hundred miles an hour to make it. I’d pay tickets as soon as I got them, but by the end, the municipalities were connected, and I got home to a letter saying, ‘You have 20 points off your license.’ I lost it for a year because of that tour. I don’t blame the Ramones, though – it was my fault!”
After the Ramones tour, Black had no choice but to scale things back even further. “I ended up opening for my friends They Might Be Giants with just an electric guitar. That was my ‘Teenager of the Year’ tour – driving all over North America by myself and doing every radio station and magazine interview I could. It was totally insane but that’s how I kept it going.”
As we wrap up, and Black nips off to join the rest of PIXIES recording right next door, I ask him which track from the album he’s most excited to finally perform live.
“Probably ‘Fiddle Riddle,’” he reveals. “I guess it’s a song like what some people would call ‘cod reggae,’ so basically shitty, half-assed, kind of not very authentic-sounding pop reggae. But really, what I was trying to do at the time was something more like The Specials or UB40, that kind of smooth, lover’s rock. We never got to do that song live, but I think I’m better trained now with my voice, so I can retain the higher notes and smoothness, even on tour. So, like ‘Sir Rockaby,’ more in this R&B kind of area. Even though I’m not super experienced singing in that style, with that kind of attitude, I like it. And for better or worse, I’m going to do it. We’re going to do it, and I want to do it justice.”
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Listening back, it’s clear that Black didn’t care whether anyone else liked ‘Teenager Of The Year’ or even just ‘Fiddle Riddle’ – as long as he did. And he did. Three decades later, it’s clear many others share the sentiment. As with much of his work, including highlights from PIXIES’ latest (‘Primrose,’ ‘Jane,’ ‘Chicken’), experiencing Black at his best feels like watching a showman unveil not just one trick but an entire vault of illusions. Like, say, ‘Bossanova’ in its own right, ‘Teenager of the Year’ serves as a wildly infectious showcase all its own.
I tell him that, for all the perfectly hectic moments on the album, I’ve always loved the song for its relative normalness. While there are countless Pixies songs I adore, ‘Fiddle Riddle’ is something I simply can’t imagine him doing with his much-loved first and main band – in any iteration.
“Right?” says Black. “The stew just wouldn’t taste the same. That’s the thing about Pixies and bands in general – if they have a certain kind of personality, whatever you do, it’s going to hit a certain way. I was able to achieve some other flavours, and that was a big part of my solo career. It was being able to explore things musically without all the baggage of a band. A band isn’t one person’s ambitions – it’s four, five, six people’s ambitions, ideas and notions. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s a lot harder to navigate, and you end up disagreeing a lot, especially when you’re young. Everyone is a fucking asshole when they’re young.”
Long after our chat, Black’s good-natured laughter at this moment lingers in my inner ear. If you caught the recent shows celebrating ‘Bossanova’ and ‘Trompe Le Monde,’ it’s clear he’s a man who has made deep peace with the intricate balance of time, creativity and collaboration. PIXIES’ evolution — from the first nine years with Kim Deal after their reunion to their second act without her — has only deepened his legacy. Yet, ‘Teenager of the Year’ exists in a realm all its own: a fearless outlier, a record unmoored from collective expectations or constraints. It doesn’t just hold its own alongside Pixies’ catalogue; in flashes, it stands apart from it completely – a testament to the uncompromising brilliance of trusting your instincts, no matter the cost. With next year’s anniversary reissue and live shows, it will finally get the vindication it has long deserved. For me, it’s a reminder that true artistic greatness doesn’t just survive or conform – it defies, breaks free, and redraws the map entirely.
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To celebrate Frank Black’s landmark solo album ‘Teenager of the Year’ turning 30, 4AD is releasing a one-time remastered vinyl pressing on January 17th, to accompany a tour of North America and a one-off show at the London Palladium on February 6th, where Frank Black and the original band will perform the album in its entirety.
Words: Brian Coney
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