Cosmic child

But just when Black's fascination with light beams and meteorites threatened to turn gimmicky -- and just when it began to seem that he was no match for the completely unhinged Thomas -- The Cult of Ray, his latest (American, in stores January 30), comes at us like a fireball. It's stuffed with space references and glimpses of what the future might be like -- the "Ray" in the title is science-fiction writer Ray Bradbury -- and yet it's the least alienating of Black's solo albums. That's not to say it's easy: he is as willfully obtuse as always. He's fueled by a crankiness that seems to have started out as basic human confusion and bewilderment, only to blossom and rage like a virus. But Ray is more energetic, more focused, than the sprawling Teenager of the Year. And as mystifying as Black can be, the songs on The Cult of Ray -- which was produced by Black, with Lyle Workman on lead guitar and Miracle Legion's Scott Boutier and Dave McCaffrey manning the rhythm section -- hang together so artfully that they pull you inside before you have a chance to be thrown out.

Like Bradbury, whose visions of other worlds embraced both golden planets and insidious, deadly spores, Black isn't completely sure whether the world of the future is something to look forward to or run from. His view of the future is sometimes cartoony: the world of "Punk Rock City" is like a post-apocalyptic Flintstones episode ("Now Yin and Yang they got together at the bank/They had a young 'un and they grew him in a tank"), peopled by genetically engineered punks who spend their lives working in the mine and partying. In "The Creature Crawling," a very bad thing is coming -- "He's crawling over to your area code" -- heralded by a mossy guitar that slithers and slides as if on its own slime.

But the paranoia that classic science fiction feeds on isn't just a fun turn-on for Black: sometimes he's painfully tuned in to it. On "Men in Black" -- which rides high on a churning twister cloud of guitar and rhythm that conjures the old Pixies' sound -- he slides into the skin of conspiracy crazies, the kind of people who write down every name, number, and sign they think is significant to the survival of the planet ("I saw everything/Dinner-plate specials/The shapes of cucumber") and send it off to elected officials and the media. What's frightening here is that Black sounds just a little crazy himself, and it's mightily exhilarating. He's not distancing himself from people who are constantly looking over their shoulders -- instead he's acknowledging that their fears aren't so irrational. "I'm watching my back/I'm waiting my visitation/From the men in black/Are they gray or is it my own nation?" he sings, a few lines later, working his voice into an eerie, fatalistic falsetto. Are the men in black from another galaxy, or, worse yet, are they from someplace around Washington? "Men in Black" is the overarching theme of The X-Files written out in musical bas relief.

But it's love that Black seems most alienated by, and his muddled declarations of desolation and confusion are what make The Cult of Ray ultimately moving in its own strange way. "Kicked in the Taco" may be one of the funniest titles I've ever heard, but the song ends with Black singing "You got my message of love" in a tangled cry -- it's like what comes out when you try to shout in a dream and the sound knots up in your throat. And Black has written the most beautiful song of his post-Pixies career with "Don't Want To Hurt You (Every Single Time)" -- a song you could almost call a country ballad. "I wish you could be what's-her-name/And I could be King Kong," Black sings, summing up his heartbroken inadequacy in a twist of two lines and sounding, for once, emotionally bare. "Don't Want To Hurt You" humanizes The Cult of Ray. It's proof that now and then even Black needs an unadulterated love song, a good one as basic as air. Nobody can live in space without oxygen, and not even a weirdo like Black would want to try.