Neal Francis

The latest album from Neal Francis, Return To Zero, emerged from the kind of visionary fever dream that only the most masterful and inventive artists are capable of bringing to life. Amid a grueling tour schedule that found him playing nearly 400 shows from 2021 to 2024, the Chicago-based singer/songwriter/pianist immersed himself in creating a beautifully strange entangling of timeless rock & roll and ’70s-era dance music, merging supremely heavy guitar riffs with lush and pulsating grooves—all constructed sans digital programming, in keeping with his devotion to all things analog. Worlds away from the glitzy fantasia of archetypal disco, Return To Zero inhabits a far moodier atmosphere and ultimately makes for the most thrilling manifestation of Francis’ peerless musicality yet.

Equal parts heady and hedonistic, pensive and euphoric, Francis’ third studio LP echoes both his deep-rooted psych-rock sensibilities and a lifelong affinity for classic funk. “I’ve always been intrigued by music that toes the line between funk and rock,” notes Francis. “In the past I’ve asked myself things like, ‘What would it sound like if Thin Lizzy cut a disco record?’ It’s something I’ve been fascinated with for a very long time, so I finally decided to really go for it.”

The follow-up to his 2023 double live album and concert film Francis Comes Alive, Return To Zero marks Francis’ first full-length studio effort since In Plain Sight—a 2021 release acclaimed by the likes of leading rock critic Steven Hyden, who praised its “throwback big-band sound that recalls the highs of 1970s funk and swamp rock.” With his past work also including his 2019 debut album Changes (hailed as “the reincarnation of Allen Toussaint” by BBC Radio 6), Francis began playing piano at the young age of four and became an in-demand sideman while still a teenager, touring with revered blues artists and beloved instrumental band The Heard before embarking on his solo career. Over the years, he’s sold out headline shows all across the globe, supported the likes of Wilco, Black Pumas, and My Morning Jacket, appeared at major festivals such as Bonnaroo, Fuji Rock,  and Lollapalooza, and even performed at historic venues like Carnegie Hall.

Like all of his studio work so far (including his 2022 EP Sentimental Garbage), Return To Zero finds Francis co-producing alongside his frequent collaborator Sergio Rios and recording live with members of his touring band (drummer Collin O’Brien, bassist Mike Starr, guitarist Kellen Boersma), elegantly showcasing his prodigious talent and dazzling originality as a keyboard player. Mainly created at Rios’ L.A. studio, the album’s grandiose yet warmly inviting sound also took shape from his close collaboration with composer/conductor Dom Frigo (who aided Francis by transcribing the LP’s symphonic string sections), Say She She (a Brooklyn-based psychedelic-soul trio who adorn a number of songs with their beguiling backing vocals), and a stacked lineup of co-writers that includes Queens of the Stone Age bassist Michael Shuman and Wild Belle co-founder Elliot Bergman.

In the making of his most ambitious work to date, Francis faced countless moments of creative frustration—a factor that eventually gave the album its title. “I was cutting a lot of the vocals at home, using a hybrid process where I’d bounce the tracks from my computer to a tape machine and then record the vocals to tape,” he explains. “I’d be in my vocal booth in the closet with all our winter coats, and every time I needed to start over I’d press this button that says ‘RTZ,’ which stands for ‘Return To Zero.’ I was doing take after take and pressing that button over and over—it was a huge pain, but it also linked up with what I’ve learned in my meditation practice: no matter how frustrated you get, just remain calm and take inventory, and then begin again.”

Although executing Return To Zero’s highly elaborate arrangements often involved a very time-intensive trial-and-error approach, the album-opening “Need You Again” surfaced from an immediate burst of inspiration after Francis attended a DJ set by Derrick Carter (a Chicago house legend who created a 12-inch remix of “BNYLV” from In Plain Sight). “My girlfriend and I went out to a queer dance party called Queen! and stayed till about four in the morning, and Derrick played a track that was a big rock riff over a funk beat,” he recalls. “The next day I went into the studio on very little sleep and started working on the demo for ‘Need You Again,’ and after I finished I couldn’t stop listening to it.” Featuring a guest spot from Grammy-winning guitarist Eric Krasno (Soulive, Lettuce), the result is a glorious entry point into the album’s groove-heavy soundscape, unfolding in sinewy riffs and larger-than-life rhythms as Francis narrates a tale of ruinous infatuation. “It’s a song about a love affair, and the experience of projecting magical qualities onto another person and feeling almost addicted or beholden to them,” he reveals. 

Another charmed moment in the album’s creation, “Broken Glass” was sparked from a session featuring Francis on bass and Shuman on drums, with the two soon conjuring the hypnotically potent riff that propels the track forward. With its viscerally charged depiction of lust and self-denial, the darkly majestic epic reaches a stratospheric crescendo at the bridge, when pounding drums meet with Say She She’s near-operatic harmonies. “Once we had that riff I started filling in some freeform poetry from my notebook, which had to do with the idea of taking direction in an intimate liaison,” says Francis. “It all came together so naturally because of how Michael was playing drums, bringing that Queens of the Stone Age heavy-rock thing I love so much.”

One of the most dance-ready tracks on Return To Zero, “Back It Up” glides along on glossy synth lines and a playfully swaggering riff, imbuing a carefree spirit into Francis’ deliberately over-the-top confession of romantic desperation. “That song went through a few different phases before we got to the final iteration,” he says. “It took me a while to accept that it’s okay to have fun with the lyrics, instead of making everything so serious all the time.” Meanwhile, on “What’s Left Of Me,” Francis presents a gorgeously sprawling power-pop anthem built on his resplendent piano work. Co-written with Nashville-based songwriter Chris Gelbuda, the track arose from a piano-and-vocal demo captured at Chicago’s Fine Arts Building, soon evolving into a piercingly candid reflection on life on the road. “Chris and I are good friends and we got to talking about the challenges of being in a committed relationship while you’re on tour,” says Francis. “A lot of these songs were influenced by Electric Light Orchestra and the way Jeff Lynne synthesizes classical music and pop songwriting, and ‘What’s Left Of Me’ was definitely one where I was going for an ELO vibe.”

Partly inspired by the funk and dance records he typically spins during his sets as an all-vinyl DJ, Return To Zero also encompasses everything from the spaced-out drama of “Dance Through Life” to the string-laced reverie of “Can’t Get Enough” (a collaboration with Durand Jones & The Indications’ Blake Rhein that is a sublimely mellowed-out homage to acid-jazz pioneer Roy Ayers). In creating such a complex body of work, Francis found his sense of perseverance repeatedly tested. “Most of these songs were pretty hard-won,” he says. “There was a feeling of pulling out all the stops to achieve what I was going for, and in the middle of that I was dealing with some depression and exhaustion. I ended up learning a lot about myself, and now I feel like I’m in a completely different place in terms of my priorities with mental health.” Despite its more daunting aspects, the writing and recording of Return To Zero also brought plenty of moments of pleasure, including composing with strings for the very first time and tracking songs with his longtime bandmates. “All those guys are like my brothers, and there was a feeling of us working together with an almost athletic desire to get better every time we did a new take,” Francis says. “Those were really long days at the studio, but they were also so much fun.”

Looking back on the making of Return To Zero, Francis points to certain crucial lessons absorbed while creating his most extravagantly realized work so far. “One of the main things I’ve learned is that every album is going to be its own journey; I can’t really take the arsenal of things I’ve learned in the past and expect them to save me from any kind of frustration with whatever I make next,” he says. “Creating art is always going to be a challenge, which maybe goes back to why AI-created music is never going to be all that compelling—it’s just too fucking easy. The best I can do is use what’s at my disposal and try not to freak out or despair when it gets difficult, and hopefully end up making something that gives people joy.”

On his new album In Plain Sight, Neal Francis offers up a body of work both strangely enchanted and painfully self-aware, unfolding in songs sparked from Greek myths and frenzied dreams and late-night drives in the depths of summer delirium. True to its charmed complexity, the singer/songwriter/pianist’s second full-length came to life over the course of a tumultuous year spent living in a possibly haunted church in Chicago. The result: a portrait of profound upheaval and weary resilience, presented in a kaleidoscopic sound that’s endlessly absorbing.

The follow-up to Francis’s 2019 debut Changes—a New Orleans-R&B-leaning effort that landed on best-of-the-year lists from the likes of KCRW, KEXP, and The Current, and saw him hailed as “the reincarnation of Allen Toussaint” by BBC Radio 6—In Plain Sight was written and recorded almost entirely at the church, a now-defunct congregation called St. Peter’s UCC. Despite not identifying as religious, Francis took a music-ministry job at the church in 2017 at the suggestion of a friend. After breaking up with his longtime girlfriend while on tour in fall 2019, he returned to his hometown and found himself with no place to stay, then headed to St. Peter’s and asked to move into the parsonage. “I thought I’d only stay a few months but it turned into over a year, and I knew I had to do something to take advantage of this miraculous gift of a situation,” he says.

Mixed by Grammy Award-winner Dave Fridmann (HAIM, Spoon, The Flaming Lips, Tame Impala), In Plain Sight finds Francis again joining forces with Changes producer and analog obsessive Sergio Rios (a guitarist/engineer known for his work with CeeLo Green and Alicia Keys). Like its predecessor, the album spotlights Francis’s refined yet free-spirited performance on piano, an instrument he took up at the age of four. “From a very early age, I was playing late into the night in a very stream-of-consciousness kind of way,” he says, naming everything from ragtime to gospel soul to The Who among his formative influences. With a prodigy-like gift for piano, Francis sat in with a dozen different blues acts in Chicago clubs as a teenager, and helmed a widely beloved instrumental funk band called The Heard before going solo. Along with earning lavish acclaim (including a glowing review from Bob Lefsetz, who declared: “THIS IS THE FUTURE OF THE MUSIC BUSINESS!”), Changes led to such triumphs as performing live on KCRW’s “Morning Becomes Eclectic,” sharing the stage with members of The Meters at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, and touring with such acts as Lee Fields & The Expressions and Black Pumas.

Recorded entirely on tape with his bandmates Kellen Boersma (guitar), Mike Starr (bass), and Collin O’Brien (drums), In Plain Sight bears a lush and dreamlike quality, thanks in large part to Francis’s restless experimentation with a stash of analog synths lent by his friends in his early days at the church. “My sleep schedule flipped and I’d stay up all night working on songs in this very feverish way,” he says. “I just needed so badly to get completely lost in something.” In a move partly inspired by Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy, In Plain Sight takes its title from a track Francis ended up scrapping from the album. “It’s a song about my breakup and the circumstances that led to me living in the church, where I’m owning up to all my problems within my relationships and my sobriety,” says Francis, whose first full-length chronicles his struggles with addiction. “It felt like the right title for this record, since so much of it is about coming to the understanding that I continue to suffer because of those problems. It’s about acknowledging that and putting it out in the open in order to mitigate the suffering and try to work on it, instead of trying to hide everything.”

The opulent opening track to In Plain Sight, “Alameda Apartments” makes for a majestic introduction to the album’s unveiling of Francis’s inner demons. “I started writing that song maybe six years ago, before I got sober,” he says. “I was going through another breakup and getting kicked out of my place, and I had a nightmare about moving into an art-deco apartment that was haunted, where the walls were all shifting around.” A prime showcase for Francis’s piano work, “Alameda Apartments” simulates that dream state in its untethered melodies, luminous grooves, and lyrics that drift from despair to detached curiosity (e.g., “It remains to be seen if the ghosts are all right”). “The craziest thing is that I’d never encountered the name ‘Alameda’ in any time in my life prior to that dream,” says Francis. “It’s bizarre that I even remembered it, especially since you don’t dream very often when you’re getting fucked up.”

On “Problems,” In Plain Sight eases into a brighter and breezier mood, with Francis mining inspiration from early-’70s Sly & the Family Stone and the glistening soft rock of Mirage-era Fleetwood Mac. But in a stark contrast to the track’s radiant synth and rapturous harmonies, “Problems” centers on Francis’s exacting introspection. “It’s about being half-in and half-out of a relationship, and how untenable that is,” he says. “I wrote it at a time when I really couldn’t maintain a relationship, because I had too many issues with myself that needed to be addressed.”

Graced with a smoldering slide-guitar solo from the legendary Derek Trucks, “Can’t Stop the Rain” arrives as the first unabashedly hopeful moment on In Plain Sight. “I wrote that with my buddy David Shaw, who came up with the refrain and this idea that even though life’s going to throw all this shit at you, there’s still so many things to be grateful for,” says Francis. Propelled by the track’s cascading piano lines and wildly soaring vocals, that refrain takes on an unlikely anthemic power as Francis shares a bit of gently expressed encouragement: “You can’t stop the rain/It’s always coming down/It’s always gonna fall/But you’re not gonna drown.”

On the guitar-heavy and glorious “Prometheus,” Francis nods to the Greek myth of the Titan god who stole fire from Mount Olympus and gave it to the humans. As punishment, Prometheus spent eternity chained to a rock as an eagle visited each day to peck out his liver—which then grew back overnight, only to be eaten again the following day in a neverending cycle of torment. “That song came from the lowest ebb of quarantine, when Chicago was literally on fire,” Francis says. “It came to me while I was driving around all these abandoned streets in the middle of the night, and turned into a song about facing my problems with addiction and feeling like I’m chained to this set of compulsions.” Threaded with plainspoken confession (“It’s not in my nature to try to do better”), the track features a sprawling synth arrangement informed by the many hours Francis spent playing the St. Peter’s pipe organ. “I call that section of the song ‘The Pope,’” he says. “It’s this grand, powerful entry that’s sort of sinister, and then it just drops away.”

By the end of his surreal and sometimes eerie experience of living at the church—“I’m convinced that the stairway leading to the choir loft where I used to practice is haunted,” he notes—Francis had found his musicality undeniably elevated. “Because I was forced into this almost monastic existence and was alone so much of the time, I could play as often and as long as I wanted,” he says. “I ended up becoming such a better pianist, a better writer, a better reader of music.” Dedicated to a woman named Lil (the de facto leader of the St. Peter’s congregation), In Plain Sight ultimately reveals the possibility of redemption and transformation even as your world falls apart.

“When I started the process of writing these songs, I was so emotionally out-of-sorts and really kind of hopeless that I’d be able to come up with anything,” says Francis. “But then I sat down and started working, and embraced whatever inspiration came my way. Sometimes it felt like beating my head against a wall, but I tried to trust that it would lead somewhere. The whole thing was like a weird dream—this very strange time of terrible, wonderful isolation.”