Despite dark CD, Francine lightens up
Three years ago, Francine frontman Clayton Scoble's heart went missing. It had been stolen, you see, a fate Scoble gladly accepted at first. But as these things sometimes go, the person who had stolen it walked away and left Scoble with a black hole where his heart once was.
So he did the only thing he could to color in the darkness. He wrote songs, lots of them, and made an album, with his Boston band, called ``28 Plastic Blue Versions of Endings Without You" that transformed the harsh remnants of a breakup into a bittersweet balm.
Although ``Airshow," Francine's new disc (whose release the band celebrates tonight at the Paradise Lounge), would seem to continue Scoble's introspection, and the band's deliberate, tortoise-like pace (Francine averages three years between albums), Scoble sounds light and sunny on the phone. He's been running in the rain and has just come in from a downpour.
``I'm in a really good place, and we've had more fun than we've ever had playing because we've removed some of the pressure," he says. ``For us, it's like bowling night."
Listeners may hear ``Airshow" as part of a continuum that's moved the band away from its early Pavement-esque indie-pop daydreams toward something moodier, more muted. Scoble says that's certainly understandable.
``A handful of the songs were left over from the tail end of the `28' sessions when I was really messed up," he says. ``But it would have felt a little Frankenstein-ish of me to deconstruct them and graft on new lyrics. For me, [the material] no longer reflects reality. It's become fiction. I'm singing about a character now instead of about myself."
For Francine, removing some of the pressure meant recording ``Airshow" on their own time, on their own dime, in their rehearsal space and at home. Still, the band -- which includes guitarist Albert Gualtieri, keyboardist Paul Simonoff, bassist Sean Connelly, and drummer Steve Scully -- was confronted with a steep new learning curve. Especially Scully, who, Scoble says, ``took it upon himself to learn how to engineer and record. He made this record. It wouldn't have happened without him. He was flying by the seat of his pants as he went along."
``We probably could have rustled up some money [for] studio time, but once you get in there, you're watching the clock and feeling pressured," Scoble adds. ``We knew we were going to be sacrificing some sonic breadth, but, on the other hand, we told ourselves that if we feel like taking all night to record a high hat, we're going to do it and won't have to worry about it. I could crack open a bottle of wine and stay up all night recording or wake up and croak a vocal and record that to see what that was like, and experiment."
Band members were listening to a steady diet of German techno-pop at the time, and it shows. Almost subliminal electronic tics -- little blips, beats, bells, and whistles -- peek out from Francine's usual hazy atmospherics and Scoble's typically opaque, cryptic verses that allude to flight formations and fumbling farewells.
``We got hooked on those sexy little loopy things, and those are easy to do," Scoble says. ``But I do worry that it's kind of linear and slavishly midtempo and if you're not in the mood to put it in cruise control and go along with this vibe, you might get impatient with the record. So I have these moments when I think, `oh boy, I hope people can get with this.' "
ALL RIGHTS PRESERVED: More than a dozen teenage bands are slated to share a bill Sunday headlined by the Boston garage-pop outfit the Charms as part of an ``All Rights Preserved" concert to benefit two human rights organizations.
The concert, which takes place between 2:30 and 9 p.m. at Arlington's Regent Theatre, will showcase 15 Boston-area groups participating in the Needham-based ``Plugged In Teen Band Program." All of the bands will make their debut public performance as part of the nonprofit ``Plugged In" program that, according to founders Tom Pugh and Sandra Rizkallah, ``provides area youth with the chance to work together . . . building self-confidence and developing performance skills and songwriting abilities."
Since 2002, ``Plugged In" participants have staged charity concerts twice a year, and this year's beneficiaries are Axis of Justice, a nonprofit group dedicated to promoting social justice and human rights and founded by Audioslave's Tom Morello and System of a Down's Serj Tankian, and Amnesty International, the worldwide human rights organization.
Tickets are $15 for students and $20 for adults and can be purchased by calling the Regent Theatre at 781-646-4849 or by visiting www.regenttheatre.com .
For more information about the ``Plugged In" program, call 781-956-4281 or visit www.pluggedinband.org.
BITS & PIECES: Tonight Gov't Mule is at the 
