Non Stop Erotik: tells us more than just how much Black Francis likes to eat pussy

When I saw the press release for this album I knew I wanted it. I knew I’d do just about anything to have it. It’s not just my obsession with the Pixies, not just my near crazed devotion to Mr. Black and his natural sex-appeal musical genius. No, that press release was written in such a stream-of-consciousness way that really, honestly just called out to me. I wanted it. I needed it. I knew it. And I’m rarely wrong on such things.

You know the rest. Of course I wasn’t wrong. Non Stop Erotik (click on that pic of the album cover to buy it)  is eleven tracks of pure, earnest, Black Francis. Oh god, I needed an injection of that so bad. Yeah, Frank and I go way back. We go all the way back to 1989 when I got my hands on Surfer Rosa and heard what, I could only tell you at the time, was something that spoke for me.  Pretty much ever since, Frank’s been doing that. I think it might have to do with Larry Norman. Maybe it has to do with Frank and I being nearly the same age, or having some of the same demons in us, but of all the “rock stars” out there, he’s the one I’d want to really sit down with one day, and just pick his brain. Oh well, you came here for an album review!

Non Stop Erotik veers from some pretty great, stand tall, Bowie-esque, rock and roll on “Corrina,” to the lo-fi, strung out, beauty of “O My Tidy Sum.” These eleven tracks hang together nicely without being at all alike, and they are flavored just enough with the rawness of his Pixie days to please me. His voice is beautifully high, pleading at times, melodic and sweet at others. “Dead Man’s Curve” puts his range to good use, he stretches out and gives us a some good, loud shouts along with a few nice octave jumps. For any doubters out there, he’s still got it, (do I really need to write that?) The ballad, title track, “Non Stop Erotik” is a little hard to get through, I’ll admit. So many people are saying this is a lyrically “off-center” album. I’m not finding to to be so odd, or even so sexually daring. Perhaps I live in a more promiscuous world than most. I’ll cop to that, ok.  The only reason lyrics like, “I want to be inside, … inside of you… all the way… all the way, …. every way… in you,” are just so hard to swallow is because of the deathly serious tone and the stodgy musical accompaniment of that particular song.

But, I don’t need that to be a sticking point because “When I Go Down On You” is such a great track. And that’s the one that I thought would be a joke, or overdone, or just well… not good. Oh darlings, it’s so very good, it steals the show. This is a love song par excellence for the simple reason that Black Francis has put into words and music the way any one of us feels for our lover, and the way we express it in the most personal manner. This is not just a song about how much Black Francis likes to eat pussy. If you can’t see how it’s about more than that, and love that about this song, …love his effort, that stripped down honesty… if you’ve not felt that way for someone… I can’t help you. There are just moments in life when it all comes together like that, when for a time, it’s really just two people who exist in the universe,… two bodies, and that’s totally all that matters. I wish that for each of you, xoxo

I never know what to make of pitchfork’s reviews, and more than half the time I never read them, especially not until after I’ve written mine. So especially with this album, I’ve not got a flying clue what their writer means by much of anything except that this album does recall much of the Pixies for me too. He gives it a 6.6, which I guess is fair. I’m a huge fan and I’d rate it higher but for the average listener I can see how that might apply, … if one were a believer in ratings, or numbers, or scores, of any kind at all that might pertain to the output of artist’s creative energies and labor, for which they should be rightfully rewarded, both financially, and with accolades of any and all types, including undying love and attention, homemade food and sweets, and perhaps oral sex upon demand. That is all.