After slaying audiences across Australia in 2016 supporting Holy Holy, Canadian hitmakers The Franklin Electric are gracing our shores again, heading around the country this week with Half Moon Run before embarking on an extensive national run with Woodlock throughout January and February.
The band’s new album Blue Ceilings also hits stores this week and today they unveil their brand new video for the single I Know The Feeling today, adding a visual to the album’s brooding lead track. I Know The Feeling builds on the Montreal act’s breakthrough This Is How I Let You Down and takes things to the next level, creating a soundscape that’s both bold and vulnerable, brimming with emotion yet with a driving beat and undeniable melody that will collect a whole new audience to their already substantial global following.
The act’s driving force Jon Matte launched the act into the world after signing with Indica Records in 2014. An Irish Catholic church choir upbringing gave way to studies in jazz, weaving both into a love of everything from hip-hop to Elton John and the ‘70s songwriting titans. Legendary label Verve Records called Matte in to remix a Nina Simone record and hanging with and learning from great engineers, he realized he could apply all that off-camera skill to his own songwriting.
“I come from a singer-songwriter-producer mindset,” Matte says, adding that he wanted to give that shape and form, “to bring humans on board, and make it all translate live.” Enter the rest of The Franklin Electric; Martin Desrosby, Kevin Warren, Ken Pressé and other players, who help fill out the palate of colours that Matte paints with, weaving a “shape-shifting” unit, and sound.
After entering and winning an international Nashville songwriting competition over 8000 other bands, opening slots would follow: Ben Howard, Mumford and Sons, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes, City & Colour, Half Moon Run. “Bonds are built, and when you tour, it all fuses together.” Matte says. The driving force of a singer-songwriter becomes a brotherhood of the road. Having found their tribe, they’d spend 2015 playing over 180 shows from Canada to Australia – three tours of Europe alone – with reviews ecstatic across the board.
Critics and fans were responding to Matte’s voice and his intuitive, compelling songwriting, but also to the singular, standout sound of an instrument still uncommon in pop: the trumpet. “Yeah, the horn’s always going to be a secret weapon,” Matte says, smiling. “Something I can pull out and people go ‘What the fuck’? To me it’s always been an anthemic instrument – it’s a battle call.”
The Franklin Electric steps up to the next level with Blue Ceilings: music that casts a spell, on a human scale. A mature, fully-formed sound that embraces the riddles of life and love. It is the human element. The spark. The drive is bigger than ever.
Catch The Franklin Electric as they weave their way across Australia (twice!) through January and February and check out the video for I Know The Feeling:
The Franklin Electric Australian Tour
with Half Moon Run & Woodstock
Wednesday 11 January – The Triffid, Brisbane
Thursday 12 January – The Corner Hotel, Melbourne
Saturday 14 January – The Metro, Sydney
Friday 20 January – Jive Bar, Adelaide
Saturday 21 January – Howler, Melbourne
Sunday 22 January – Sub, Hawthorne
Friday 27 January – Beach Hotel, Byron Bay
Saturday 28 January – Woolly Mammoth, Brisbane
Thursday 2 February – Brass Monkey, Cronulla
Friday 3 February – Newtown Social Club, Sydney
Saturday 4 February – Small Ballroom, Newcastle
Sunday 5 February – Rad Bar, Wollongong (Matinee & 18+ evening show)
Friday 10 February – Settlers Tavern, Margaret River
Saturday 11 February – Fly By Night, Fremantle
girlatarockshow.com 