So why is Frank Black’s Teenager of the Year on this best 1,000 albums ever thing?
Teenager of the Year is the “most me” album of all.
For example, “(I Want to Live on an) Abstract Plain” and “Headache” are two of my favorite songs of all time, and I’m pretty sure almost no one I know has even heard of them. Well, there is one exception: my man Nirav, who turned me on to Frank Black’s post-Pixies solo career back in college.
But “most me” goes much deeper than tracks I dig.
Teenager of the Year is the closest any album has ever come to sounding like how my brain works. How it feels.
That’s why every time I listen to it I feel like I’ve taken my mental medicine. I feel better, like I’ve come back to myself in some small but fundamental way.
It’s crazy to me – gloriously crazy – that I can cue up the mid-tempo alt country of “Speedy Marie,” which is maybe my 12th favorite song on the album, and still instantly feel those feelings.
I’m also arguing – as its #5 placement in this project attests – that this album is Frank Black at his most Frank Black.
It’s the weirdness, the eclectic palette, the ferocity, the velocity, the transcendence, the restlessness, the lyrical fragments forming a cryptic poetic kaleidoscope.
I connect to so much of that, in my own way. Something inside of myself pushed me, compelled me really, to conjure up this almost impossibly ambitious best 1,000 albums ever project. And to fill it with the only materials I have any real expertise in: words.
This piece is a tribute to the best album by a guy I’ll never meet, who I could only wish would know that he inspired me to be more me.
In the Pixies, with Kim Deal and crew, those elements were all there, and brilliantly so. And on Teenager of the Year they take on their most refined and strangely luminescent form.
To take a step back, the Pixies frontman and prolific solo artist is not for everyone. That’s just not who Black – who also goes by Black Francis, and was born Charles Michael Kittridge Thompson IV – is.
His sensibilities and style, ranging from musical genres to lyrics to his singing voice, are off-kilter, often striking and weird and funny. I deeply connect to those vibes. Even in my most regular of moments – taking out the trash, walking my dog Jack, sitting in on a weekly status meeting – in my mind The Kinks are singing, “I’m Not Like Everybody Else.”
Something tells me that Frank would vibe with that.
There’s also a restlessness and velocity and force of nature quality to the album that both energizes and chills me the fuck out at the same time. Take the gorgeous thrash of “Thalassocracy” as one example.
But then you can also feel those qualities, that seeking and yearning to wander in new creative territories, in “(I Want to Live on an) Abstract Plain.”
I’ve had it with this town
I never saw those shifting skies
I never saw the ground
Or the sunset rise
I want to live on an abstract plain
Catch me on the right day, and I’ll tell you that “Headache” is my favorite song of all. Like, by anyone. It’s endlessly catchy and soothing and driving, its rhythms and modes sweeping seamlessly back and forth and back again.
And it has the kind of specific-yet-universal lyrics that you can insert yourself into, and slots perfectly with how weirdly mind melded I feel with Frank Black and this album sometimes.
This wrinkle in time, I can’t give it no credit
I thought about my space and I really got me down
(got me down)
Got me so down, I got me a headache
My heart is crammed in my cranium and it still knows how to pound
Though I won’t pretend to understand what the lyrics to the pretty, offbeat “White Noise Maker” are about, I’ve internalized and made the first section my own.
You know I hear a lot of talk
So I’m headed for the stereo store
To get a white noise maker and turn it up to ten
This is me, out in the world with ear goggles strapped on, cribbing the line from the Beastie Boys, listening to music or podcasts. Taking in the physical world while forever exploring my internal life, the sounds and words that shape meaning.
While casual music fans would likely think of Black as a punk rock guy, the musical ground he covers never fails to dazzle me. Much like “Here Comes Your Man” during his Pixies era, “I Could Stay Here Forever” shows off an earnest, non-cryptic, and even deeply romantic side. And with accompanying strings!
“Superabound” is gloriously spacey, slightly psychedelic, and kind of “soft punk rock,” if that’s possible? What’s not in doubt is that it is superaboundly fantastic.
If I had to choose one representative song that’s “fun punk rock,” I could do much worse than the bouncing, delirious ride of “Pie in the Sky.”
Teenager of the Year has 22 tracks and runs for a little over an hour. I could go on longer with this track-level review – and trust me, they’re all smashers – but I think you get a good sense of what this album does and what it means to me.
What it says about me.
And why it’s #5 of the best 1,000 albums ever.
Some stats & info about Frank Black – Teenager of the Year
- What kind of musical stylings does this album represent? Rock Music, Hard Rock, Alternative Rock, Indie Rock, Punk Rock
- Rolling Stone’s greatest 500 albums ranking – not ranked!
- All Music’s rating – 4.5 out of 5 stars
- When was Teenager of the Year released? 1994
- My ranking, the one you’re reading right now – #5 out of 1,000
Frank Black’s Teenager of the Year on Spotify
A lyrical snippet from Frank Black’s Teenager of the Year that’s evocative of the album in some way, maybe
I want to live on an abstract plain.
What does the “best 1,000 albums ever” mean and why are you doing this?
Yeah, I know it’s audacious, a little crazy (okay, maybe a lot cray cray), bordering on criminal nerdery.
But here’s what it’s NOT: a definitive list of the Greatest Albums of All-Time. This is 100% my own personal super biased, incredibly subjective review of what my top 1,000 albums are, ranked in painstaking order over the course of doing research for nearly a year, Rob from High Fidelity style. Find out more about why I embarked on a best 1,000 albums ever project.