Albert Hammond Jr. has spent the last half-decade making the most of a second chance. After clawing his way back from the cocaine, heroin, and ketamine habits that nearly cost him his life, the Strokes guitarist has churned out the most focused music of his solo career in 2013’s AHJ EP and his 2015 follow-up, Momentary Masters. His new full-length, Francis Trouble, was inspired by a lost twin who died in a miscarriage while Hammond continued to grow in utero. Reflecting on this family story led him to imagine the titular Francis, an energetic alter ego bearing the spirit of the sibling he never knew. It’s a creative rebirth that aligns with Hammond’s own new lease on life.
It also sounds like a recipe for music that’s somber, if not a little ponderous, and yet Francis Trouble extends Hammond’s recent hot streak: It’s some of the brightest and scrappiest music he’s ever made. You can hear his background as a rhythm guitarist in the album’s arrangements. Beats are uniformly brisk; every riff sounds as clean and crisp as a pressed and fitted button-down. Even the solo on “Set to Attack,” the album’s one moment of guitar heroism, stays orderly until its waning seconds.
Hammond’s writing is sticky enough to override any attempt to plumb the album’s depths for meaning. It’s hard to keep an ear out for oblique references to identity crises or other potential subtexts when melodic guitar lines are being unfurled every few seconds. (Hammond himself has discouraged any sort of close reading in a press release: “What the music says may be serious, but as a medium it should not be questioned, analyzed or taken too seriously.” Noted!) While he’s been writing power-pop stunners like this album’s “Far Away Truths” and “Strangers” for well over a decade, he spends a good chunk of Francis Trouble tip-toeing out of that well-defined comfort zone. “Muted Beatings” strikes a delicate note without giving up any of its nervous energy, and the ominous “Tea for Two” includes an extended passage that sounds like Hammond’s take on Destroyer’s Kaputt. After hearing “ScreaMER,” I dreamed about hearing him on a double bill with the word-drunk gentlemen of Parquet Courts.
Tapping into the character of Francis has unlocked a new degree of confidence in Hammond’s singing, and his vocals throughout these songs are surprisingly varied. He jumps from the classic cool of “Far Away Truths” to the skittish gasping of “Muted Beatings” without pause, where he once might have spent an entire album in the former mode. His impassioned howling on “Tea for Two” creates an urgency that wouldn’t exist otherwise, and he chews on vague-but-stylish kiss-offs like “Tell all your friends/Why we burn at both ends.” Not every choice makes sense: Hammond’s subdued approach doesn’t suit the Thin Lizzy-isms of “Stop and Go,” and he wastes the emotive pre-chorus of “Strangers”—one of the few moments on the album that feels explicitly linked to the loss behind its title—with a lunk-headed chorus and “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey”-style vocal affectations. Yet he has better luck elsewhere, and Francis Trouble often rings with a happy-go-lucky spirit and easy tunefulness that Wings-era Paul McCartney would have appreciated.
When Hammond’s solo career began with Yours to Keep in 2006, it seemed like little more than a cute diversion from his role in one of the decade's most important rock bands. It was hard to imagine a world in which you could think about Hammond without thinking about the Strokes. Since then, that group has become yet another bloated blockbuster franchise, coming together for a new release every few years even though it doesn’t seem like anyone involved particularly wants to be there. Perhaps the greatest compliment you can pay Hammond is that he’s done enough good work to outrun the shadow of the riffs he laid down on Is This It and Room on Fire. And if your candle is still burning for the band that made “Last Nite” and “Under Control,” why waste your time waiting for another Comedown Machine when Francis Trouble—tight, affable, and unpretentious—is ready and waiting?
