JW Francis is a promise of the American indie scene, or rather New York, as he’d be keen to specify. Born in Oklahoma but raised in Paris, Francis was artistically shaped in the Big Apple. Proving his NYC credentials, JW qualified as a licensed New York tour guide. In between recording his album of gentle but playful odes and laments to the city’s iconic skylines and characters, Francis also finds time to work a day-job as a research assistant for a Nobel Prize winner, runs a murder-mystery business. As if that wasn’t enough, he also maintains separate backing bands in LA, San Francisco, Paris and Glasgow to name but a few of the dozens of cities, 19 states and five countries, for precision’s sake, he has played in. The artist, who likes to strap his guitar on with a rainbow belt, went on tour so excessively, but of course didn’t have the budget for it before his debut album, so he asked his fans to get support bands in several cities for him to shape.
The freshest signing to Sunday Best Recordings, he makes couch potato DIY pop, but has a license to give tours through New York City – of course, one of the songs is called “New York “. His debut full-length album is called ‘We Share a Similar Joy’ alongside which, he released a video for a single called ‘All There’. The single follows ‘Good Time’ and ‘New York’, which was A-Listed at BBC 6 Music, added to Radio X’s X-Posure playlist and saw support from DIY, NME, The Line of Best Fit and Wonderland, to name a few.
He describes his sun-soaked, energetic genre as ‘lofi bedroom slacker jangle AM radio pop’. JW Francis’s album will make you want to hang up your coat, take the load off and rejoice. Its lo-fi, intimate sound provides a genuine comfort in these uncertain times and firmly secures Francis’s credibility as a future stalwart of his genre. Describing his debut as ‘a warm blanket’ JW’s intention was very much to make a body of work to escape to, as he elaborates, “It is a place to run away to, but also a place to celebrate life’s small moments of joy from a quiet moment of pre-dawn solitude to an all out delirious, cathartic party. The album is about the shared feelings of nostalgia, childhood, anxiety, longing, and most of all, joy.”
The album is available on a limited-edition yellow vinyl, which you can order here: https://orcd.co/wsasj
Born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, JW landed in New York City at 19 to study Economics at Columbia University, but not before making stops, stays and stints in Chelsea, Vermont, aged 12 and Paris, France, aged 13. Whilst at Columbia, the troubadour started music blog Rare Candy and founded student-run recording studio CU Records. Musically, JW takes his lead from the greats of the downtown scene – Patti Smith, The Velvet Underground, Television, Talking Heads, Strokes & Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ – whose inspiration can be easily heard across the album.
