Sure, we all know James Franco is an actor, director, writer, poet, painter, performance artist, student, teacher and pret-ty good-looking dude. However, did you also know “art-rock band member” was also on his professional resume?
Yup, Hollywood’s ultimate Renaissance man is one-half of the conceptual band Daddy, along with Tim O’Keefe, who Franco met while getting his MFA at the Rhode Island School of Design.
In anticipation of the band’s upcoming full-length album, which is set for release in 2015, Daddy just premiered the video for their newest song, “This Charming Man,” which is based off Franco’s book of poetry, Directing Herbert White: Poems… And, of course, The Smiths. (The album even features original Smiths’ member, Andy Rourke, playing bass. Can you say
“We took a ten-poem sequence called ‘The Best of the Smiths: Side A and Side B,'” Franco told Vice. “I originally wrote this sequence as a way to use one medium (music) to influence another one (poetry). The Smiths’ songs provided inspiration for the poems, lending tone and situation. Once I had the sequence, Tim and I took the material one step further and turned the poems inspired by songs, back into songs of their own.”
The characters in the video also appear in Franco’s poems and are based on real people he went to school with in Northern California. Kinda makes you wonder if there’s any crossover between the muses here and those featured in Franco’s novel, Palo Alto.
As for what Daddy sounds like, don’t expect to listen and come out of the song singing a particular verse. Like much of Franco’s work, the music is more experimental than melodic.
Watch the video and tell us if you love or are completely perplexed. We think there is room for both.
More songs by Daddy are available on the band’s Soundcloud.
