Francis Farewell Starlite’s musical project known widely as Francis and the Lights, etches way into the new year with Just For Us, released December 29. While this album is completely new, it brings us back to his old work where the listener is coaxed into the nostalgia of his own heart. Perfectly layering over stories about the inner workings and the eventual heartbreak accompanied by relationships, he manages an album that stumbles into itself again and again.
We’re given a more in depth understanding of how he feels and how those feelings dwell within the confinement of his music.
The first track of the album, ‘Morning,’ serves as just that. It’s a song carefully composed, it seems, to hold the thoughts and blessings of a morning. It’s his ‘thank you’ for another day, a day that could have been taken away from him. A day that wouldn’t have existed without the his consistent need to have some sort of reason to live.
He drives the album to its original place and setting with the album track. We’re subject to a completely personal plead in love. ‘Just For Us’ is a nearly three minutes long and serves as a voice for the words we want to say, but could never properly muster out loud. We’re left with Francis’ interpretation of all that we could feel.
Just For Us, while it may be a nearly perfect compilation of the human experience within the parameters of love and loss, leaves something to long for. He repeats themes already dragged across through acres of his musical endeavors with the last two songs. We’re seeing repeats of being taken apart emotionally and falling in love all over again. We’re not given anything else except those theme repeats, which doesn’t leave much room for complaint considering that while the aforementioned may be, he did it in a way where we’re experiencing it all over again.
The album is a seemingly drastic journey in which he personalizes and shares with us. At first listen anyway. Teetering into a second listen, we’re noticing the way his words lace with the ballads and provide that sense of familiarity for the listener that he didn’t falter in mastering over the course of the album. The album is available for streaming on Spotify and for purchase on Apple Music.
He wrote this album Just For Us, simply put.
