Fran Lobo – ‘Burning, It Feels Like’ review: bold, passionate ballads from a fantastic lyricist

16 August, 2023

Fran Lobo

The title of ‘Burning, It Feels Like’ – Fran Lobo’s debut album – came from a therapy session in which she explained how it feels to be infatuated with someone new. She and her therapist were exploring what she calls “love addiction”; constantly obsessing, idealising, getting lost in fantasy, and inevitably ending up crushed. Across this album, the London singer-songwriter paints that feeling as equal parts intoxicating and dark, using her multifaceted art-pop to sonically illustrate the chaos.

These songs are constantly shifting and often unsettling. Alongside glitchy, skitterish electronics, Lobo uses orchestral elements – strings, brass, choral vocals – to subtly create friction. Elements are often introduced in brief bursts. Listen to ‘Slowly’, a song composed lyrically of real text messages from a past relationship; the violins fade in and out, ambient backing vocals swirl – all serving to envelop and overwhelm the listener.

Lobo often uses the musical directions of the songs cleverly. On the title track, what starts as a piano ballad diverts into a swell of fairytale Hollywood harp flourishes and strings, like those that would accompany a lovestruck Disney princess — but the violins are unsettling and mournful. This fairytale isn’t quite right, it suggests. Then, the song unfolds into something Motown-esque. The words she sings, addressed to a lover, are heartfelt and full of yearning (“I only, only, only wanted you / You’re everywhere, you’re everywhere I go”); yet interspersed with this refrain, a backing choir sings as if they’re addressing Lobo: “Wake up, wake up, little darling.”

Elsewhere, ‘All I Want’ is glitchy and sultry most of the way through, yet at the end, it becomes clubby and confident – the contrast works well to raise the stakes. The song embraces the mess of a toxic situation, giving into the fun that lies in that danger. It’s proof that ‘Burning, It Feels Like’ is three-dimensional; while the title may have been born in a therapist’s office, listening to the album doesn’t feel like being in one.

These tracks are album highlights, as is ‘Armour’, the record’s catchiest song, an agile yet gritty exploration of self-worth which descends into a breakdown of breathless vocals and frenzied saxophones. The songs here aren’t just captivating in their arrangement, but elevated too by Lobo’s skill as a performer – her vocals are alive and expressive. She exudes catharsis but is always in control.