Black Francis - a.k.a. Frank Black and born Charles Michael Kittridge Thompson IV - is a man with a lot on his mind.
Forget about his storied career as the frontman of the Pixies, and later Frank Black and the Catholics. Francis is all about his family now. And six months after moving into his current house, he's still up to his neck in "boxes of crap."
Francis will be working his indie rock magic sans the wife and five kids at the Starlite Room tonight.
"Between the things that I purchase and all those toys and all the crap and everything, it's just like 'Holy s--t!' We're just like rats in a maze. It's just like this consumerism thing. 'The man' is just waving bits of coloured plastic in front of us and we're going, 'Ahhhhhhh!' " as he raises his voice to a maniacal howl. "Whether it's a TV set or whether it's a video game or some little rattle for a baby, it's just like, f--kin' coloured plastic!"
Francis explains that he attempted to curb this problem by refusing to buy the little ones any plastic toys at Christmas.
"My wife got these really cool, nice wooden toys imported from Germany," he says, admitting he still caved to their requests for the latest gaming system.
He says he even planned to make a family movie with footage of them filtering through their coloured plastic clutter, but it sounds like he could go right ahead and write an entire album about it.
"I'm not like a real hippie or anything like that, but you know, sometimes we're just like 'F--k, the world is ending man, and we're contributing to it.' "
His latest offering, Svn Fngrs, is far from any sort of consumerist statement, however, but is actually a concept album based around the Irish mythological figure Cuchulainn, who was said to be a demigod with seven fingers and seven toes.
If that seems a little random, it's meant to be that way.
"I said, 'What's my unifying concept? I do not know. I'm completely uninspired, I do not know. Wikipedia, random article search, do that for a couple hours," he says, recounting how he put a halt to his writer's block when making the album.
The search eventually turned up a piece on demigods - "God juice and man juice in the same night, one woman, equals demigod," he explains - which led him to Cuchulainn.
With the rough, yet sweet melodic rock filling the seven-song "mini LP," on which his wife Violet Clark handles bass guitar duties, he's all but done away with any country rock meanderings.
But as the conversation turns to music, Francis is interrupted by his fatherly duties, stopping to warn his son about hurting his unmentionables when horsing around naked.
"When you're that little, you haven't really been kicked in the nuts yet, you know what I mean," he explains when he returns to the phone. "You haven't really discovered how sensitive that area is ... they don't get it yet."
As another of his young ones reminds him of the $3.75 he allegedly owes over a chocolate purchase, Francis seems more amused than flustered. He's all about looking at the positives.
"It's great having kids. You can just enslave them to do the things you don't wanna do," he jokes. "One of the things that I cannot stand doing in the house is emptying the dishwasher. I don't know why. I don't mind filling it up but I cannot stand unloading it and putting all the s--t away. So I'm always like, 'Julian, you need to do some chores. You need to empty the dishwasher!' "
A father through and through, but no less a rock star and cult hero, Francis is currently searching for a label to release the songs of Grand Duchy, his side project with Clark.
