Franco
Tuesday, September 15th, 2009Where: Vancouver, BC
What: Pop/Adult Contemporary
Visit: www.thisisfranco.ca
You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression. As cliché as that sounds, there’s more than a grain of truth to it. When you regularly listen to a lot of bands you begin to look for that immediate connection that makes you want to hear everything they’ve got. Twenty seconds into “Forever,” Vancouver’s Franco had my undivided attention.
The foursome of Mark Bridgeman (guitar/lead vocals), Marcus Abramzik (bass/vocals), Andrew Ras
mussen (piano/vocals), and Josh Contant (drums) has the kind of polished pop sound that just screams radio – and radio is listening. The aforementioned track, which has a very Crowded House feel to it (Bridgeman sounds like a cross between Crowded House’s Neil Finn and Keane’s Tom Chaplin), has been chosen for the intro to CBC Radio’s Almanac. And earlier this year, Franco was chosen as the featured band of the month on Vic
toria’s 91.3 the Zone FM.
They’ve been together little more than a year and their average age is just 22, but Franco sounds like they’ve been perfecting their sophisticated brand of melodic music for years, which draws on a host of influences ranging from John Mayer, Something Corporate, and Death Cab for Cutie to Coldplay and Keane.
You gotta like this band, and not just for the music – they’ve got big hearts as well. They recently embarked on a summer tour in support of their This is Franco album, which they are also using to champion the Kids Help Phone. They’re donating 15 per cent of the sales from that record to that charity. Expect good things for this band.