RECORDINGS Quick Spins

(Back Porch - Back Porch)

FAST MAN RAIDER MAN

Frank Black

Frank Black, who defined himself as a world-champion shrieker in the Pixies, almost never raises his voice above a Leonard Cohen monotone in his restrained solo work. So when he screams at the crescendo of "Dirty Old Town" -- a country duet with the unheralded singer-songwriter Marty Brown -- the effect is jarring and cathartic. It's the peak moment of a 27-song album that rambles all over the place.

"Fast Man Raider Man," Black's second album in two years, is a collection of well-written rock, soul and country songs, about topics ranging from Hurricane Katrina to tragic Polish coal miners. There's no common thread other than Black's flat but oddly alluring croon and all-star session men such as the Band's Levon Helm and Cheap Trick's Tom Petersson. Nothing is particularly fast, loud or dramatic, but bits of things sink into your skin -- the recurring little piano chords of "Johnny Barleycorn," Black's unexpected falsetto in "My Terrible Ways," the dark, Spanish-style acoustic guitar in "Raider Man" or the line "through your cigarette-stained beard your love rang true" in the rhyming rocker "Fitzgerald."

Freed from the tensions in the Pixies, which he broke up 13 years ago and rejoined for a lucrative tour in 2004, Black is a regular guy with compulsive songwriting tendencies.

Minus the tense chemistry with Pixies bassist Kim Deal, Black has never made a song as memorably explosive as "Wave of Mutilation" (revisited here, briefly, at the end of "Elijah"). But he has never made a bad album, either, and "Fast Man Raider Man" is twice as not bad as usual.

-- Steve Knopper

DOWNLOAD THESE: "Dirty Old Town," "Raider Man," "Elijah"

LAST DAYS OF WONDER

The Handsome Family

The seventh studio album from the husband-and-wife duo known as the Handsome Family continues the entertainingly unique style that Brett and Rennie Sparks first fashioned on their 1995 debut, "Odessa" -- namely, traditional Americana with a modern bent, both in the instrumentation (including banjo and a drum machine) and the eccentric lyrics Rennie pens (a clue that someone's dead, for example, is "when automatic sinks in airports no longer see your hands"). And like all of the Family's albums, "Last Days of Wonder" was recorded at their home studio, though contributions from Stephen Dorocke (pedal steel) and David Coulter (musical saw) were supplied via e-mail.

Musically, the album's 12 tracks are all over the country map. "Bowling Alley Bar" is a fun, cliched honky-tonk about drinkin' and dancin'. "These Golden Jewels" -- featuring a Mellotron tape loop Brett found online and the attention-getting line "I will set the world on fire" -- has a Satan's-circus, Tom Waits feel. And a simple waltz tells the story of -- really -- Nikola Tesla. Brett's baritone handles the main vocals in all except the pretty, haunting "Hunter Green," in which Rennie sings of laying someone's "cold corpse down." But just as the Sparkses immerse you in the skull-and-crossbones of the hills, they yank you back to the world of air travel and restroom technology.

-- Tricia Olszewksi

DOWNLOAD THESE: "Flapping Your Broken Wings," "Somewhere Else to Be"