Electro pop that wants everything, can do a lot and leaves ashes behind.
On the cover of her debut album, Fran Lobo appears as a menacingly seductive fire creature. The theme of “burning” runs through BURNING IT FEELS LIKE, the matter is ambivalent: fire stands for warmth and longing, but also for destruction and anger. And in the end there is ash left, one way or another. Lobo finds access to the subject through a kind of pop music that takes all liberties. There are Disney-esque moments, with harps, choral singing (by their own ensemble, the Deep Throat Choir) and soothing harmonies.
One song later, the Londoner embarks on the deconstructive trail of the more recent Bon Iver recordings and lets an electric guitar howl in the battered funk context of “Push And Pull” in a way that hasn’t been heard since Prince. How all this can flow together is shown above all in “Tricks”, in which lives an enchantingly kitschy 80s ballad that Fran Lobo dresses in a completely new way with her fantastic production skills – and thus makes him fit for 2023.