Neal Francis
Return to Zero
ATO
After 2021’s analog-tape-driven, bijou-blazing Nola blues album In Plain Sight, Neal Francis has found the funk in digitized-disco fashion on his third album, Return to Zero. No, I don’t mean that he sounds like Daft Punk, but then again I do mean that he no longer sounds like the living spiritual embodiment of the playful patron pope of New Orleans, Allen Toussaint, as he did on his 2019 debut. With a soulful set of pipes that sound as if they’ve been put through a hollow body guitar’s tube amp (especially when he goes for a far-flung falsetto on the rock-shake-funk of “Broken Glass”) and spare melodies set to the silvery strings and metronomic four-on-the-floor pump of a Disco-Tex and the Sex-O-Lettes session, fresh tracks such as “Need You Again” and its slowed down cousin “Don’t Wait” radiate a glow only known to those who live life on illuminated dance floors.
What’s nicest about what Francis is doing on Return to Zero has everything to do with vibe and lean-to-the-bone melody, and nothing to do with glossy production or orchestration, which is the mistake most 21st century artists tend to make when aping the disco era. There’s a raw husk to the flat snare sound, the slowly ascending guitar click, the woodblock kick, the cool conga roll, and the cheap synth whir of “Back It Up” that makes its arrangement incredible and pure while allowing its singer space enough to lower his voice and smoothly invite its object of obsession a chance to, well, back it up. Nothing rushed, nothing slick—think of how Steve Miller produced “Fly Like an Eagle” and "Rock’n Me.” Now, check out Neal Francis’ ever-so-slightly detuned “Can’t Get Enough” with its palatial piano and flickering wah-wahs. Find that eagle and fly it, man.
The only times that Francis veers from that flatlining sound is when he embraces the Rundgren-producing-Hall-and-Oates twin-guitar soul of “Already Gone,” the power-overdrive of “What’s Left of Me” (co-written with Sabrina Carpenter collaborator Chris Gelbuda), or adopts new-old-new bedroom pop technology for his closing title track. Everything else is solid gold, plated proudly from another time and dimension.
