Robert Francis: Before Nightfall - review

His father, according to Francis's website, is the "eccentric owner of one of the largest collections of sheet music in the US", while his mother grew up one of nine sisters in a tiny, poor Mexican town. Ry Cooder gave him his first guitar when he was nine, and songwriting is "a way to keep me from completely losing my mind". Why, then, does his second album sound like the work of every American soft rock act that crops up on Later ... With Jools Holland, squeezed between the latest indie sensation and a returning legend? It's a pleasant haze of guitars, bass and drums, sliding by like midwestern plains viewed from a car window – Junebug and Keep on Running rattle along determinedly and enjoyably enough, in a drivetime sort of way – but there's little of the sense of sincere connection that lifts the very best American heartland rock out of its homeland and makes it universal.