Frank Black

Hate to disappoint you, but it sounds like the latest rumours concerning a much-anticipated new Pixies album have -- again -- been greatly exaggerated.

Despite what you may have heard from New Music Express, Rolling Stone, or countless other music blogs, a chat with frontman Frank Black quickly lays to rest the latest falsehood. Well, for now, at least.

"It's all bulls--t," says Black (aka Black Francis, aka Charles Thompson IV), from a tour stop in Montreal en route to a local appearance Sunday night at Pantages Playhouse. "It's just NME running with some scrap that is much less than that, of course."

The conversation went something like this, he says:

" 'What's the plan, Frank? When's the new album coming? What's the plan?' ... 'Well, we're getting together to do a little jamming, maybe in January -- that's it, no plans.' ... 'Ohhh, they're going to make a new record!'

"I mean, I made it very clear that that was not what I was saying, but I can only -- ah, whatever."

You can forgive Black for sounding weary whenever the topic of the Pixies comes up. For a decade after the hugely influential art-rock quartet broke up, he was pestered about a reunion, typically while trying to promote his own solo catalogue, and usually after making it clear a reunion just wasn't in the cards.

Then The Pixies did reunite, for a well-received (and fairly lucrative) tour, and now the question on everyone's lips is: "When will a new record come out?"

Ourselves, we're content to chat with Black about his new double-disc Fast Man Raider Man, but not before asking how he feels when critics and fans insist on comparing his solo stuff with The Pixies.

"Everything is so dumbed down," he says. "People want to sell magazines or newspapers or records, and so do I. And the only thing that makes me notable or worth mention or more marketable is to say, 'Hey we talked to this guy about his record. Oh yeah, and he's the guy who used to be in this band The Pixies.' "

Oddly enough, it's Black who brings the band up next, this time after being asked how he went about directing the many session players -- among them Steve Cropper, Spooner Oldham, Al Kooper and Levon Helm -- on Fast Man Raider Man in Nashville.

"You let 'em do their own thing to a certain extent," he says. "Unfortunately, as I tell many people, I don't really have any artistic vision. I may have an idea about how the tempo's going to be, but I'm pretty open about how things are going to turn out ... I don't want to think about it too much. I want magic to happen, and in my experience, magic is this unexpected, accidental, didn't-see-it-coming kind of thing. You can't plan for it. I don't know what the most popular Pixies song is, maybe Where is My Mind or Monkey Gone to Heaven. You can't really plan for those kind of things ... You don't really hear the awesomeness of it until you hear the playback."

There was a bit of a blueprint with Fast Man Raider Man, he admits -- namely, to try and record an entire album in one evening after a Pixies gig, swapping musicians as the night (and subsequent day) wore on. The tracks that resulted, however, left him with an embarrassment of riches, as well as tough decisions to make.

Producer John Tive "was inviting everyone from Paul McCartney to Nick Lowe to participate, so we had all these people -- sometimes we had three drummers in the room, and one of them is Levon Helm and one of them is Simon Kirke. You're just like, 'Everybody play!' " he laughs. "When we went to mix some of this stuff, I'd literally be sitting there going, 'Let's erase the Al Kooper part, get rid of the Steve Cropper part, there's already too much guitar.' I was being really brutal about all these legends that were playing, but you couldn't have it all be on there, because it was too much ... I just never thought I'd be saying, 'Nix the Al Kooper!' "