What compels an ordinarily unassuming man to wake up one morning, grab his ordinarily unassuming double-barrel shotgun and his .22 rifle with telescopic sight, go into town and fire randomly at innocent people, killing 12 and leaving umpteen others critically injured? By that same taken what compels Black Francis to grab an old guitar, finger some ‘interesting’ chord-shapes and promptly head into the studio in the mistaken belief he actually has something of worth to record? Both deeds are really quite senseless, but having sat through the full 36 minutes of Black’s latest record Police can now officially confirm that Mr Francis’s wanton actions are clearly the more tragic of the two.
Cut on the spur of the moment in the wee hours of the morning in Los Angeles, before being knocked into some kind of shape in London, ‘NonStopErotik’ adds weight to the theory that thesedays Black produces music in a fairly instinctive, guttural fashion and then routinely attaches some quasi-philosophical, artistic pretext to them by way of justification. Serial killers do much the same thing: a moment of spontaneous, almost random violence gradually acquires some meaning. It’s a vanity of sorts. Which probably explains why Black’s press-sheets are invariably filled with rambling and portentous diatribes about ferns, vaginas and the like. And sadly, not even spelling 'erotic' with a 'k' relieves the general ennui much either.
Simply put: this is an album of rough ideas, demoed up in as proper a fashion as time, energy and material allows and promptly served for his legion of fans to invest with some significance or other and contribute to his ever extended tithing tray. Some of the rough ideas hint at something pretty cool, like the piano led title track, the whimsical and canticle-esque, ‘Rabbits’ and the sweeping, Phil Spector influenced, ‘When I Go Down On You’ – but it’s largely an underwhelming souvenir for four or five guys who’ve enjoyed pissing around in the studio for a few days. Personally, I'd have preferred a fridge-magnet.
One day Black Francis might get round to actually doing something with all these great ideas. On the otherhand, it’s one mystery that might remain unsolved. 
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