Non Stop Erotik

As it happens, most of these songs are rockers, and even the ballads possess a toughened core of energy.

NonStopErotik lives and dies on your particular hunger for music like this in 2010. If you love what Francis has done over the span of his solo work, (and to a lesser extent, if you love the Pixies) you’ll find just enough in the album to merit a listen or two. If you only have a passing interest, it’s probably not worth your 45 minutes.

Taking his muse from the voyeuristic photographs of Man Ray, each note drips with sex and death.

If the younger Black Francis might have transformed a cover of the Flying Burrito Brothers' "Wheels" into a cool surf epic rather than a Velvet Underground-inspired reconstruction, the elder delivers an intriguing mix of vitality and cool detachment. It's easy to take those seemingly at-odds qualities for granted, but here Black Francis sounds not just comfortable with that aesthetic but surprisingly and paradoxically in control of it as well.

It's a slight album, but by the standards he himself set, and patchy Black Francis is better than no Black Francis at all.

So while the music on this disc might not inspire a wave of followers and imitators like his Pixies days, Thompson is clearly having a lot of fun cranking out his latest batch of rock ‘n roll surrealism.

Even if this isn’t some of Francis’ most striking work, it continues the more personal vein of songwriting he began exploring after the Pixies.

Explicitly ribald material, whether delivered with cheeky bombast ("When I Go Down on You") or the barely veiled lechery of the more sweetly inclined title track feel like unnecessary pushes into boldface territory.

It reaffirms Black Francis’ place as a great songwriter in the rock pantheon.

Nonstoperotik showcases Black’s gift for mixing the sinful with the sublime.

Over the wandering course of these 11 tracks, Francis is the aural equivalent of a boxer who's had five too many concussions coming out for one last payday. [Spring 2010, p.68]

He's rarely assembled a stronger collection of songs. [May 2010, p.102]

The attempt to stir his inner shitkicking garagepunk isn't always successful but a handful of tracks here are creepily sensual. [May 2010, p.85]