I’ll admit that it was a little surprising to me that Albert Hammond Jr’s latest release Francis Trouble is already his fourth solo album. Sure, I get that he’s been doing the solo thing for awhile, but four albums? That really snuck up on me. Then again, The Strokes’ first album – released all the way back in 2001 – still feels like a relatively recent album to me if I don’t think about it too hard. Damn, I am old. Regardless, it is his fourth album, it’s quite a good album, and his tour behind said album took him and his band to the Horseshoe Tavern on Tuesday night.
Opening his set off with a snippet of The Doors’ “The Soft Parade” playing over the PA (“You cannot petition the Lord with prayer!”), Hammond and his band took to the stage and put on an entertaining, high energy show for a packed house at the Horseshoe, full of lots of catchy melodies (“Tea For Two,” “Muted Beatings” and “Set To Attack” being the standouts of the night) and a fair bit of dual guitar harmonies.
Over the course of the night, Hammond proved himself to be a highly charismatic frontman who really knows how to work a room – I guess all those years of playing big festival headliner shows with The Strokes have really paid off.