It would be fair to say that an artist that took twenty one months to write, record and produce ten songs may be taking their sweet time over it (unless that someone is called Axl Rose) and perhaps focusing on other aspects of life rather than the music. And this is true to an extent with Franki Love. As if caring for her Mum who was suffering with cancer then recovered, relapsed and sadly died in her arms wasn’t enough, her mentor, who stimulated Franki to push through and write music after her Mum’s death, also died. That’s a lot to go through in a short space of time. To lose people of such importance to you takes a long time to recover from, but to then sit through all that pain time and time again to write something that is powerful, sensitive and soulful is incredibly difficult. The self-imposed pressure to produce a body of work that would make your mother proud and something that justifies the help your mentor provided you with would be simply immense.
New album Otias, which is Franki’s mother’s maiden name spelled backwards, is filled with passion, self-determination and reflection. For Franki Love, this feels like a deeply personal album, in which her desire to avoid cookie cutter pop was only matched by her desire to keep the spiritual element in her music, never settling for anything less than her vision. The album is not written to please the masses or the record labels, it is written for herself, what she holds true. This sentiment is reflected in the following statement; “it’s not ‘who you know’ but ‘WHO YOU ARE’ that really matters… and it’s not about being perfect, it’s about being real and you… authentically”.
Franki Love truly has a phenomenal voice and coupled with her classical training in piano provides a powerful combination made only stronger by weaving her lyrical skill into one emotional tapestry of an album. I look forward to following this artist more and more over the coming years and eagerly await what she might do next. Twenty one months to make an album feels like a long time but the time and dedication really shows in the quality of Otias’s ten tracks.
Franki Love’s ‘Otias’ album is available now.
