We had the pleasure of interviewing Pete Francis over Zoom video!

That juxtaposition of darkness and light lies at the heart of, PTRN SKY!, Francis’ captivating new album and first full-length release since his 2019 departure from Dispatch. Recorded at home in Connecticut, the collection finds the acclaimed songwriter and multi-instrumentalist reckoning with the depression and anxiety that have dogged him for most of his adult life, transforming doubt and pain into growth and transcendence with remarkable grace and empathy. The writing is intensely raw and vulnerable here, even as the lyrics explore a world of improvised abstraction, and the arrangements are cathartic to match, wrapping deeply personal reflections inside layers of lush, dreamy synthesizers. The result is an unflinching glimpse into the subconscious of an artist learning to make peace with the struggle that threatened to rob him of everything he held dear, an aching yet ultimately triumphant testament to the power of love and art to make us feel whole again, even at our most broken.

A New England native, Francis first came to fame in the late 1990s as a founding member of alternative roots powerhouse Dispatch, whose remarkable rise from Middlebury College to Madison Square Garden helped rewrite the rulebooks for modern indie bands. Though few knew it at the time, Francis was fighting an increasingly difficult battle with depression throughout his years of relentless touring and recording, and after taking multiple leaves of absence, he eventually made the decision to step away from the band entirely in order to focus more fully on his health and wellbeing.

In addition to therapy and medication, Francis turned to songwriting as a means of self-care, working both on his own and back at Middlebury, where he began mentoring younger artists just beginning their journeys. While he’d released a series of widely lauded solo albums over the course of his tenure with Dispatch, the new material Francis found himself writing in the wake of his departure from the band was different than anything he’d ever created, leaning more heavily on synthesizers and drum loops and embracing the endless possibilities that came with the marriage of organic and electronic elements.

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