Kevin Bronson on October 23rd, 2017

0

Robert Francis is no longer the wunderkind who, at 19, released a debut album of jaw-dropping depth and tenderness. He is better.

Francis, the mercurial folk singer who got his first guitar from Ry Cooder and was mentored by John Frusciante, will release his seventh album, “Indian Summer,” on Nov. 3 via Aeronaut Records. The mileage Francis, 30, has piled up on the odometer of his experiences makes for rich lyrical grist on the new album, which, in songs that range from spare folk and blues to road-ready roots rock, find the songwriter looking inward and outward.

As the album announcement points out: “Joseph Campau” chronicles the relationship between blue-collar residents and refugees in Hamtramck, Mich., the first majority-Muslim city in the United States. “Modoc County” follows a Native American couple’s journey off a reservation in northeast California. “The Brand” comments on corporations that wish to be humanized and the artists that willfully sell out to them.

For the new song “The Magic,” though, Francis — who played all the instruments on the “Indian Summer” himself — looked no further than than his own life. “From the age of 19 to 26, I spent my years traveling in a van,” Francis explains. “My friends and I toured valiantly, onward, upward, downward and sideways. In 2014 at a homecoming show in L.A, I met my girlfriend. I haven’t been on a national tour since.

“Musicians will agree that life on the road will make you dream of normalcy. If you’re gone all the time, how do you lay a strong foundation at home, one that can’t be fucked up on the road? When we moved in together, I knew we trusted each other enough to start touring again. Moreover, neither of us liked the idea of being too comfortable because in longing, there is magic, and that is what we’re all searching for or trying our best to hold onto.”

||| Stream: “The Magic”

||| Also: Stream “Burn Out”