“Blue Tuesday” – Francis of Delirium

Fingertips

“Blue Tuesday” – Francis of Delirium

How is it that some singer/songwriters sing about their personal angsts and it comes across as kind of small and whiny while other singer/songwriters sing, as well, about their personal angsts and it soars into something weighty and inspiring? It’s a mystery. And obviously my personal perspective on any given musician is just my own, and often at odds with cultural consensus. But Jana Bahrich, who fronts the project Francis of Delirium, strikes me as the real deal. Nothing small and whiny about what she does.

From the ringing guitar and pulsing backbeat of the intro, “Blue Tuesday” propels us forward with itchy resolve. We are pushed directly into the middle of a story via the opening line’s unusual kickoff: “And it starts in the back of a cab.” This demonstrates the kind of stout assurance that supports the song beginning to end–an assurance perhaps best epitomized by the audacious slant rhyme upon which the chorus pivots:

It’s a blue Tuesday
I could use babe some of us

In another setting, in someone else’s hands, this (sort of) near rhyme might seem an awkward blunder; here it feels sly and subversive. She’s kind of daring you to call her on it and not caring if you do. Throughout, the 22-year-old Bahrich sings with a tone alternating between airy and grounded, between vulnerable and assertive. You buy what she’s selling; the underlying bash and drive leaves you almost no choice. This a concise song both musically and lyrically, with a seemingly straightforward meaning: the narrator is feeling down and desires her partner’s presence as a balm. But being down often leads to passive indecision, while in this case, the singer knows what she wants and asks for it, not something everyone has the presence of mind to do. She offers a second slant rhyme in the process, in the second half of the chorus: “It’s a blue Tuesday/I could use babe some of your touch.” It’s an even slantier slant, matching two syllables (“your touch”) against one in the previous line (“us”), so the lyrics scan differently too, with Bahrich hesitating on the second word, landing it on the backbeat of the next measure, sweeping us back into the song’s adamant flow.

Based in Luxembourg, Francis of Delirium was previously featured on Fingertips in April 2022. “Blue Tuesday” is a track from the outfit’s excellent debut album Lighthouse, which was released in March. I like by the way that the song is the fifth track on the album–another move, in a world of side-one, cut-one singles, that speaks to Bahrich’s underlying confidence. MP3 via KEXP.

(A sad side note: KEXP’s “Song of the Day” feature, which has fed Fingertips a significant number of free and legal MP3s over the years, has been discontinued. The MP3s they’ve uploaded still seem to be online at this point, but it’s unclear how long that will last.)