It's a truly strange trick to be a subtle song-stylist and a raging guitar hero at the same time, but no one would deny Frank Black his eccentricities. While Kim Deal graduated from the Pixies to help define the new breed of radio pop called alternative with the Breeders, Black moved his former band's more radical notions from Boston to L.A., wined and refined them, and fashioned a sort of sunny left coast take on the Sonic Youth/Yo La Tengo brand of artsy New York guitar rock. Black's first two solo albums showed a wildly original writer and eclectic performer with a wide grasp of song forms and the distinctive voice to make them all his own.

The Cult of Ray, Black's third album (a tribute to fellow extraterrestrial Ray Bradbury), presents a slimmer, more stylistically consistent set of crunch-chord slams with a punk theme, including "Dance War," and "Mosh, Don't Pass the Guy," "Jesus Was Right," and "Punk Rock City." The album's missing eclecticism is more than compensated by Lyle Workman, whose muscle-bound lead guitar work is the stuff of Lou Reed's legendary sideman, Robert Quine. It even turns a so-so track like "The Creature Crawling" into a thrillingly exotic slink. Reaching a climax on the title track--with its furious punk riffing, soaring prog rock solos, and vivid but opaque lyrics--Black's Cult founds a curiously fruitful settlement in the vast sonic tundra between Green Day and Captain Beefheart. --Roni Sarig