ADAM FRENCH

Since 2014, Adam French has continued to thrill audiences with songs ranging from quiet, acoustic folk to catchy pop and cleverly interspersed moments of brilliance of orchestral grandeur that also have something to share and offer lyrically. After initially bundling his songs, including singles like "More to Life," "Hunter" and "Weightless," all long-term favorites on British rock radio and Spotify well past the two-million-stream mark, into separate EPs each year, French released his long-awaited debut album, "The Back Foot and the Rapture," in 2019 to critical acclaim and such a following not only across Europe but also in Africa and the U.S. that French toured with it for nearly a full year. Now the 30-year-old multi-instrumentalist announced his second longplayer for next fall, he did not give any further information like the title or the release date yet. However, a first tour for this album was confirmed, which will take him throughout Europe in October. In Germany, he will stop for three shows in Berlin, Cologne and Hamburg between October 7 and 10. Adam French has lived in London for some time, but originally grew up in Congleton, Cheshire East, a small town not far from Manchester. It was there, after teaching himself guitar, then piano, then drums and finally bass as a teenager, that he developed his own unique sound aesthetic and a distinctive approach to his highly melancholic songs, far removed from the musical centers. Already around the release of his first singles almost a decade ago, the British trade press attested him to possess all the qualities to establish himself as "the next great crooner from the UK". But French is far more than just entertaining the public with sophisticated elegance and tasteful songwriting, which is so central to crooners; rather, he sees his songs as a medium for establishing a direct connection with complete strangers - and entering into an interpersonal dialogue with these people, for example at concerts, without a single word being spoken. And it works like this: "My music is entirely about my own past experiences," says Adam French. "It's about life, death, love and everything else important to me that I've experienced so far. If you as a listener can connect with just one little detail that I sing about, I've reached the exact point of why I started making music in the first place back then. To trigger shared memories and associated emotions through a song and continue to cultivate them." Lyrically, he exposes himself to the bone within his songs, illustrating his unfiltered feelings and also the mental instabilities and doubts that sometimes arise. A chronicler of his own searching and failure, but also of finding and arriving. What of this applies to the second album, which will be released in the fall, is pure speculation. The only public statement on this from Adam French so far is: "This summer and the upcoming album marks the start of a completely new era for me." So one can be very curious. -