Francis Lung - Miracle

Since the strange, sudden dissolution of Mancunian upstarts WU LYF, nearly a decade ago now, Tom McClung has decisively struck out on his own as Francis Lung. While that band’s frontman, Ellery Roberts, has ventured into similar future-anthem territory with his new outfit, Lost Under Heaven, bassist Tom has gravitated consistently towards his pop influences. This follow-up to 2019’s debut full-length ‘A Dream Is U’ is very much in the same vein as that album, not least in how accurately it reflects the press quip from him that accompanied it - that it sounded “like a short Mancunian boy single-handedly trying to incite Beatlemania”. Sure enough, ‘Miracle’ is deeply indebted to the Fab Four, packed as it is with melodically chirpy pop songs that are drenched with melancholy once you begin to dig into Tom’s lyrics, which are pleasingly witty, even if he does drop the occasional clanger; on ‘Blondes Have More Fun’, he sings of “spending all my time indoors, listening to The Cure, like it really is a cure.” A Mancunian born and bred, he’s never quite going to escape comparisons with The Smiths, and the ghosts of Morrissey and Marr do linger in the background on ‘Miracle’, but the band these songs really call to mind is Belle and Sebastian; the plaintive pop aesthetic, the smart, matter-of-fact lyricism, the handsome flushes of the string section. Tom isn’t reinventing the wheel here, but he knows what he’s good at; ‘Miracle’ is a skilfully crafted record.