REVIEW: Francine Honey — Can’t Press Reset (SINGLE)
Having the right voice to take on a specific composition is everything when you’re a singer/songwriter, and so far Francine Honey has demonstrated a knack for picking the perfect material to suit her gilded pipes every time she gets into the recording studio. For her new single “Can’t Press Reset,” she dials back the aggression in favor of giving us something a little more delicate in this performance that conflicts with the ferocity of her backing band quite a bit; that said, this is the sort of sonic hurricane that raises an artist’s profile in their scene (which is never a bad thing).
URL: https://francinehoney.com/
The music video is shot lockdown-style with the different players represented in split screen and cutaways that show us how well they interact together even when having to social distance. I actually think it winds up being a more positive way to show off their chemistry together than a more elaborate video structure — in this instance, there’s nothing to come between the artist and her audience as she works up to the cathartic release in the chorus, and this is something that’s been a pretty serious issue for some of Honey’s peers in the underground recently.
This beat is a little robotic for what I usually like, but I will say it needs to be to create some consistency on the backend. When all is send and done, I think the minor points of contrast in “Can’t Press Reset” are going to be what wins this song so much attention from listeners and critics as 2020 transitions into 2021. Honey could have gone streamlined, but she’s instead choosing something way more complicated as a manner of telling her competition — mainstream, indie or otherwise — that she’s planning on bringing her A-game into the next year.
I definitely hear some American country influences in this song that few critics have been willing or interested in noting with previous releases in the Francine Honey discography, and I don’t quite know why it hasn’t been as noted before. She’s blending a bit of folkiness into the grander scheme of things here, granted, but the twang on the guitar parts is enough to get anyone feeling a classic Nashville vibe. This woman is a creative cultivation lifer, and her scene would benefit from more players putting the same amount of time and passion into their work as she does in singles like this one.
While many (myself included) been hearing a lot of good buzz about Francine Honey since 2018, she’s making a point of giving us everything she’s got as a vocalist in this latest studio work that indicates we might not have seen even a fraction of her complete skillset just yet. “Can’t Press Reset” is a definitively aware ballad that has been adjusted to rock gently and with sustaining charisma, and I do believe it’s going to make a lot of this singer/songwriter’s most loyal fans very happy with what she’s been working on through 2020.
Colin Jordan
