COURTESY: FRANCISCOTHEMAN.COM
After seven long years of lineup changes and various setbacks, Francisco the Man has finally released a full length album and are happy to be on the road sharing their highly anticipated new songs with the public. Oxford is in luck this year, as Francisco the Man will be headlining a show at Proud Larry’s tonight at 9 p.m. This long awaited show should prove to be a roaring good time.
The band’s origins can be traced back to humble beginnings, with a chance encounter at a skating rink in Riverside, California.
“I met Nestor and Abdeel at some sort of DIY show in high school at a roller rink,” said Scotty Cantino, frontman for the band. “It was love at first email.”
This meeting was the start of a musical journey for the trio, which, at the time, consisted of Cantino on lead vocals, Abdeel Ortega on drums and Nestor Romero on bass. The three teens began playing at any venue available to them in an attempt to get their sound out to the public.
It was not until 2008 that the band officially came together and took on the name “Francisco the Man,” which plays off of a minor character in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s masterpiece “One Hundred Years of Solitude.”
The years between 2008 and 2011 proved pivotal for the group as they took on a fourth and final member, guitarist Brock Woolsey, made the move from Riverside to L.A. and went on a short hiatus from performing.
This period became a crucial time of growth for the quartet, as they soon after released their very first and wildly successful singles. But a few tracks could only keep the group’s creativity at bay for so long, and in October of 2014, Francisco The Man finally released the electronic vision that is “Loose Ends.”
Brimming with edgy and amplified hooks, “Loose Ends” is an explosive ten track album that proves the group’s hiatus went completely into honing their craft. Each track is pristinely placed and polished into a synth-pop romp. The energy that begins in the album’s opening number, “You & I,” weaves its way through until the final ballad, “It’s True, It’s You.” The album is rampant with musical surprises, including a whopping nine-minute, bass heavy, electro-rock jam called “I Used to Feel Fine.”
Each song creates a dreamy aesthetic that is not bound by genre, as hints of alternative pop and danceable punk blatantly shine through the entire album. As a group that takes influences from an eclectic mixture of musicians, including Television, Talking Heads and Funk Brothers, Francisco the Man caters to a wide range of music lovers. As a generation that is constantly searching for the next big thing, Oxford students will certainly not go wanting with Francisco the Man.
