The widely circulated story about Robert Francis, apocryphal as it might be, is that he was, at the age of 9, given his first guitar by Ry Cooder. If anything did rub off on Francis with this exchange, it is the languorous, dusty tone that shines through a good chunk of Cooder’s work. Take that away and what is left is the glossy reverb-heavy sound that makes up much of the roots-y rock coming out of L.A. of late. What helps Francis stand out from that congested pack, however, is an appreciable lightness of touch. Even the most upbeat songs, like the rambling lead single “Junebug” or the heat vapors of “I Like The Air”, would be trenchant stompers in lesser hands, but here are wrapped in a smoky atmospherics befitting songs born in a city of smog and wildfires.
Yet, just as his biographers use the Cooder story to provide some context for his music, Francis tries to hard to stick to the templates provided by his forebears. There’s the creepy Dylan impression that he delves into on the acoustic closing number “Do What I Can” and his warbling version of a Scott Walker production on “Hallways”. Whether he’s achieved his talent by osmosis or by pure skill, Francis has the goods to be a talent of note, but he has to learn to rely on the strength of his own voice if he’s going to get anywhere.