SONG PREMIERE: Francis Cheer Furnishes Emotive Power Pop With “Deep End”

It may not sound like an obvious album title from an artist that goes by Francis Cheer, but Black, White, and Grey really does offer bright and gloom. Imagine a platform where each composition is its own identity – reaching to answer questions and create an alternate reality from the status quo. Francis Cheer provides that musical medicine.

Black, White, and Grey (due out 9/30) is the second full-length album from Francis Cheer (John Gerrard), and like previous efforts, was recorded by Gerrard – who is also a visual artist with an emerging painting career – at his own Electric T Cup studio, where he performed the bulk of the instrumentals himself. After bringing the recordings to engineer Pat Palardy’s Public Lunch Studio, Gerrard enlisted drummer Chris Dadge (Chad VanGaalen, Lab Coast) to bring a human touch to highly inventive beats and rhythms he’d programmed during the Electric T Cup sessions.

Glide is premiering “Deep End” (below) off Black, White, and Grey an uplifting power pop number that resides next to the charmers of Big Star and Badfinger, while claiming an edgy poignant underbelly.

“I wrote this song about my first real extended break from reality,” says Gerrard. ” I was walking around downtown Calgary and began having the delusion that I was talking to the rest of the world in a strange primal language. Wherever I went I thought the whole scene was staged for me, so I felt safe jumping over cars and singing mostly nonsense. It was hard coming back to reality, and there was an embarrassment that came with that; from being egotistical. I would later have more negative and paranoid breaks, though this one felt amazing when I was in it. I think that’s why it makes sense for the song to have a happier feel. On a different note, I think we can all relate to being dropped into this life and having to find our own start and story. I also like the swimming metaphor with “Deep End”, the idea that our minds have these deep and overwhelming places that we can’t stay in for long.”