Now that the Pixies reunion is on the back burner, frontman Black Francis has wasted no time in busying himself with other projects. Earlier this week, we learned that he was readying a new collaboration with Reid Paley called Paley & Francis, due out in September. Soon, fans will have another release to look forward to: a box set containing the complete recordings of his band Frank Black and the Catholics.

An update on BlackFrancis.net reports that the collection is being mastered this month in Los Angeles. The announcement reveals that it will include all six of the group's official albums plus "once-released-digitally-but-hard-to-find tracks from Snake Oil and One More Road for the Hit, along with the elusive Sunday Sunny Mill Valley Groove Day recordings."

The release date is currently up in the air, but the mastering will be completed before July and packaging and artwork are underway. The set will be available in a variety of formats: CD, LP, USB stick and digital download. Given the volume of material, the physical boxes are bound to be massive (not to mention pricey).

There will also be some "other goodies to be released in conjunction with the boxed set," so keep your eyes peeled for future updates.

I wouldn't mind owning that on vinyl.

As much as I love Catholics-era FB, I will say that some of it is aging poorly compared to say, The Pixies (at some point I probably said I preferred some of the Catholics albums to the Pixies but that may have been due more to burnout than anything). Still, it's high quality shit and he would do well to revisit it because his last several releases have done very little to nothing for me. Bring back the dueling pedal steels!

I'd like Bloor to own this in vinyl as well.