ROBERT FRANCIS & THE NIGHT TIDE

ROBERT FRANCIS' fourth studio album Heaven (Membran) is a feverish hydroplane through the emotional tumult of youth. Through it all, he is calmer than he's ever been; self-possessed in the face of uncertainty. FRANCIS dances through genres on Heaven, but never escapes his distinct vision of self. His hallmark voice is urgent and bewitching, melding a great spectrum of music and emotion into something distinctly personal and immediate.

ROBERT FRANCIS was born in Los Angeles, California and is 26 years old. He released his first album One By One at the young age of nineteen. NPR praised the album by saying, "FRANCIS has laid himself out in song," and that "the music feels like it's coming from a place of freedom and essential truths. Not many people can manage to do that, it´s a rare gift." In 2009, he signed to Atlantic Records and released his sophomore effort Before Nightfall. The album's leadoff single “Junebug” became the number one song in France in 2010 and top 30 song in Germany, topping the charts with artists like Rihanna and Lady Gaga trailing behind. Before Nightfall sold over 100,000 records worldwide and earned the Twenty-Two year old a Gold Album in France.

Following this startling success, FRANCIS recorded Strangers In The First Place in a mansion in Malibu. Atlantic Records could not categorize the finished product and found the album hard to understand. It was an ambitious effort for Robert, and rather than looking to please Atlantic by enlisting a new producer or a team of co-writers, he left the label. Vanguard Records signed and released Strangers In The First Place in 2012. Not long after, he embarked on a three month tour in support of the record. After one month it was cut short due to a near nervous breakdown. ROBERT FRANCIS immersed himself in drugs and alcohol, shaved his head and moved to Michigan with a girl he'd met on the road and quit music. "I'd never known a life other than one consumed by music. I had to lose myself in order to rediscover who I was in the beginning. I was able to do that in Michigan but eventually left to start over and pursue a series of songs that kept showing up in my dreams."

With a fresh outlook on music, FRANCIS formed a new backing band called The Night Tide. They began recording in Woodinville, Washington in a barn an hour outside of Seattle. The journey then took them to Laguna Beach where they recorded in a house on the sand. Not long after, ROBERT FRANCIS built a studio in his Mt. Washington home and finished the album there. "Heaven is an idea, place or feeling in which all of us are after yet cannot fully understand. Most of the songs on this album are concepts dealing with things that are much bigger than us. “Love Is A Chemical” copes with the desire to be in control while coming to terms with ones fate -- that we're victims to the cards we're dealt. “Blue”, in a similar sense, ponders over the notion that we are alone in a dense world in which our choices have already been made - yet we are defined by how we manage them."

Heaven is ROBERT FRANCIS' most realized album to date. It is not his most polished. It is a record that utilizes every facet and flaw of his being. Through his kaleidoscopic lyrics and vivid musical landscapes, FRANCIS paints the picture of a man on the fringes of himself and reality. We are all searching for something. "I followed her to beaches, we slept on the dunes, I still see her eyes lit by fragments of moons - not crescent or full inside of the storm, she'd dive and resurface each time changing form. But time kept insisting we both sink like rocks, time out of water resumed on the clocks, she slept while the second hand spun on the wall, I thought Mama oh' Mom I've been meaning to call." Heaven was produced by ROBERT FRANCIS. Mixed by Mark Rains (Black Rebel Motorcycle Club) and mastered by Howie Weinberg (Nirvana, Jeff Buckley).