Pitchfork

While we await the arrival of his Isaac Brock and Larry Norman-enhanced re-working of Lee Hazlewood's Trouble Is a Lonesome Town, Black Francis aka Frank Black aka Charles Thompson aka that guy in front of Pixies for a while there has assembled a collection of new solo material.

The Bluefinger follow-up is a mini-album called Svn Fngrs, and it comes out April 1 via Cooking Vinyl. Regarding the format, Black had this to say in a press release:

"There are seven songs clocking in at 20 minutes, and so I suppose it qualifies as a mini-LP under the old formats. No one seems to know or care what the current format models are (a very weakened LP on compact disc continues to rule the roost by default), which is WONDERFUL; so let's just call it music and pay whatever price your Google research turns up. If you want it for free, you can usually find some tracks for free download on my MySpace page or on my own blackfrancis.net."

Black also had an interesting note about the content of Svn Fngrs, saying, "The theme revolves around a lot of NASTY sex, NASTIER death, and beautifully strange birth."

The first Svn Fngrs song to hit the net (via an official YouTube video and the audio player on Black's website) is "I Sent Away". Cooking Vinyl, however, plans to release a "Charles Normal Re-mix" of Svn opener "The Seus" as a single. A video for that song is expected as well.

Black's only scheduled live date is an appearance at San Francisco's Castro Theatre on April 25.

Svn Fngrs:

01 The Seus
02 Garbage Heap
03 Half Man
04 I Sent Away
05 Seven Fingers
06 The Tale of Lonesome Fetter
07 When They Come to Murder Me