Fran has shared a second track lifted from their debut album ‘A Private Picture,’ which is due out November 15th via Fire Talk. So Surreal is an extremely catchy, guitar-driven song with lead guitarist and songwriter Maria Jacobson dissecting the intersection between our internal experiences, private imaginations, and external realities.
Jacobson on the track…
“So Surreal is about daydreaming. There’s a huge disconnect between the world we create in our minds and the external world. In our minds, we jump from scene to scene, we see ourselves as more than and less than we are. We are constantly imagining the possibilities of relationships, dreams, jobs, pursuits. You have to be a Buddhist monk to just walk down the street.
Our daydreams have real power and can transform our lives – but they also pull us out of the momentum of what’s happening. This song tries to capture that frenzy of being pulled in too many directions at once, even if it’s all in your head.”
So Surreal is accompanied by a new music video, directed by Tony Duvall, that draws from 90s/00s pop music videos. Jacobson describes as wanting to “revisit the origin place of many of my childhood daydreams and aspirations: late 90’s/early 2000’s pop videos. The gorgeous sets and costumes, the bright lights with roving cameras, the flawless dance moves. This is my jacked-up version of an N’Sync music video.”
Watch the video clip for So Surreal via YouTube below.
The trick is to make a confession entertaining. ‘A Private Picture’ delivers a collection of extremely personal experiences that have been distilled and abstracted to the point that you can see yourself in their imagery, find analogs to your own emotional history in their scenarios –when you hear them, it’s a conversation. It’s therapy, if therapy was allowed to turn you on and make you shake what you got.
‘A Private Picture‘ track listing
01. Now
02. Company
03. So Surreal
04. Time and Place
05. In My Own Time
06. (I Don’t Want You to Think) I’ve Moved On
07. A Private Picture
08. Desert Wanderer
Pre-order: https://ffm.to/franaprivatepicture
Fran will embark on a string of dates in support of the album starting in November, find those below.
Tour dates
11/08 – Cincinnati, OH @ The Hub OTR
11/09 – Columbus, OH @ Bourbon St. Bar
11/10 – Buffalo, NY @ Electric Ave.
11/11 – Hudson, NY @ Spotty Dog
11/12 – Middletown, CT @ Mac650
11/13 – Boston, MA @ O’Brien’s Pub
11/14 – Brooklyn, NY @ Alphaville
11/15 – Philadelphia, PA @ Anthorna Gallery
11/16 – Washington, DC @ 7 Drum Live
11/17 – Asheville, NC @ Beau Dome
11/18 – Athens, GA @ Flicker Bar
11/19 – Atlanta, GA @ DM
11/20 – Louisville, KY @ Kaiju
11/23 – Chicago, IL @ Hideout Inn
More about Fran?
Maria Jacobson began writing songs during a time of great personal upheaval. Working as an actor at a summer repertory theatre in rural Indiana after a disillusioning stint in the Chicago theatre scene and a series of failed relationships, she bought a guitar and taught herself to play. Through this instrument and her voice, she discovered a way to process the pain of recent events and draw ambiguities closer to conclusions.
Landing an English teaching job with sparse hours in a small city in Mexico afforded the time and space to develop as a songwriter: playing and writing all night until it became clear that a body of work was forming.
Maria returned to Chicago and kept a cool head while navigating the general hassle that is getting your first band together. She employed the help of friend and bassist Atticus Lazenby to form the band and arrange their first EP called ‘More Enough’. It was through the release of the EP on Chicago tape label Lake Paradise that she met Jake Acosta. Jacobson recalls, “We met for beers at this weird bar that doesn’t exist anymore in Humboldt Park and were so happy to have met each other. That is sort of where everything changed.”
At its core, Fran’s music is about sharing a truth -– telling it, confessing it, yelling it -– in the service of human connection. Or, as Jacobson puts it, “I feel that I am a songwriter for the same reason I wanted to be an actor. I want to tell the truth. I want to challenge myself to get closer and closer to the core of an experience, an emotion – I want to say it, sing it, in a way that says exactly what it is. I cry when I write songs because I am constantly making discoveries, about myself, about the world, about the best way to convey and connect and get closer.”
