It’s been said that to write a decent pop song, all you need is three chords and the truth. But as pop music’s brief history has shown, things aren’t always that simple. Sometimes you need to smudge the truth a little to get your point across; sometimes you need more than three chords. And sometimes you need a glockenspiel, a Suzuki Omnichord, and a Tennessee high school marching band.

Frances Premiere Music Video For “Cold Water” is part of the $99 Music Video Series. The full length album, “All The While” is out now on Gigantic Music; produced by Chris Zane (Les Savy Fav, The Walkmen, Asobi Seksu).

Frances know this all too well. The coed sextet’s debut full-length “All the While “carries on the great tradition of pop music that plays with itself, taking the fun parts and discarding the dumb ones, flirting with chaos but always returning to a gloriously catchy, melodic center. It’s resolutely childlike, fanciful stuff (toy instruments abound, as do sing-sung lyrics about stagecoaches and telephones made of paper cups and string); but then, Frances are correspondingly serious in their execution, employing whiplash-inducing chord changes, bizarre stylistic touchstones (Van Dyke Parks’ pop oddities, classic AM-radio rock, a little Stravinsky, a little Sondheim), and darker moments that hint at something terrifying lurking behind the swooning strings and oom-pah horns.

All the While, Frances’ debut full-length on Gigantic Music, is a perfectly realized expression of the band’s genteel madness. It’s experimental pop, dressed up in a top hat and tails. Frances is Stephanie Skaff (vocals, sundries), Brian Betancourt (guitar, sundries), Nick Anderson (bass), Julia Tepper (vocals, violin, sundries), Tlacael Esparza (drums), and Paul Hogan (vocals, keyboards)

via EM Staff, 9 April 2009 11:28am | 2 |