Francis and the Lights - Farewell, Starlite!

The Guardian 80

(KTTF)

As well as having a quite ridiculous name, Francis Farewell Starlite has one of the juiciest phonebooks in pop: he’s produced Drake, Frank Ocean and Chance the Rapper (who declared him “the new Prince”), and this album’s lead single, Friends, features Bon Iver and Kanye West. But he’s much more than a canny networker, producing fleet-footed modern pop with just the right amount of whimsy.

The almost percussion-free opening track See Her Out (That’s Just Life) rides the year’s best synth line, a monolithic yet dainty melody that pirouettes like a twinkle-toed mechanoid. That delicacy carries over into the candyfloss of May I Have This Dance and I Want You to Shake, whose pinpricks of silence keep them funky. Even the earnest piano ballads know when to hold back as well as really turn on the emotion. It’s about as edgy as a toddler-proofed kitchen and is essentially Owl City in tailored jeans, but very few records induce such compulsive mashing of the replay button.