JW Francis is an intriguing individual. Born in Oklahoma, raised in Paris and now based in New York, he was once the assistant to someone who won a Nobel Prize, is a licensed NYC tour guide and owns a murder mystery business. His scratchy, lo-fi indie-alt-pop has a similarly eclectic feel to it, taking inspiration from the city Francis now calls home.
Taking inspiration from The Velvet Underground and the music of New York over the decades, JW Francis sounds a little like a three-minute distillation of Meet Me In The Bathroom, Lizzy Goodman’s oral history of New York’s post-2001 music scene. There’s a little Vampire Weekend in here, and a whole lot of the Strokes.
First things first, though: Three-minutes is short. Orbit is brief, but bubbling over with energy and ideas. It is a lesson in the value in leaving people wanting more… The ideas JW Francis employs here barely stick around long enough for you to really wrap your head around them, let alone long enough for them to get old. I find myself reaching to scrub backwards before the song has even reached its conclusion, looking to just taste a little bit more of the sunshine Francis has captured here.
And that’s because this is a bright, beautiful, heartfelt record about falling in love. Inspired by his feelings in meeting his partner, Milla, Orbit is so unselfconscious and earnest, and so in tune with the bright, adrenaline-fuelled instrumentation Francis employs. In listening to it, I can’t help but feel the love and affection that drove him to make this song, as he describes here:
‘There are many things that have changed about my life since I wrote my last album, and one of those has been falling in love. I wrote Orbit after falling in love with my partner, Milla. I was awe-struck, dumb founded, blinded by the light, however you want to call it. I could not believe my luck, and I wanted to write a song about it. I wanted the song to race fast like a heartbeat, and to get up in your face like feelings. The music video is about finding harmony with all the different parts of yourself.’
The whole song is restless and excited and difficult to keep up with. As JW Francis hits the bridge, calling out, “I want you… I want you, I want you, I want you, I want you”, he reminds me of Tom Cruise, sofa-bound, in love and losing his mind. Whereas Cruise felt unhinged, however, JW Francis sounds genuinely besotted.