On their second album, Leaving, Fran finds us at a crossroads of loss and possibility, borne  from the grief of isolation and the existential drama of a warming planet. In spite of this grief,  songwriter Maria Jacobson took the solitude of the past few years to commit to seeing reality  clearly. Jacobson was inspired by Alan Watts’ Wisdom of Insecurity, which examines the  difference between belief and faith: the former inviting constriction and holding on; the latter,  presence and letting go. Jacobson sought to let go of the roles and ambitions that had  previously defined her. 

“I’m not the same as I was when we started,” she states plainly on “God,” welcoming the  “certain change” that all humans must face. During quarantine she started taking online  theology classes to understand how humans had made sense of their lives throughout time. In  her curiosity that blends into the stained glass piecing of her songwriting, Jacobson began  seeing everything around her as possible religions: social media, family, capitalism,  individualism, science. These belief systems help people understand the world: our emptiness,  our connectedness, and our purpose. 

Leaving’s resulting mixture of instrumentals swells and bursts and sometimes lays completely  bare, like a heartbeat or an open field. Jacobson’s voice enters each song like a vine wrapping  around an idea. The songs often start with only a couple words, then pause, boldly identifying a  time, season, place. She connects the listener with a familiar landscape or image, something  grounding between moments of anxiety. On “Winter,” a dish towel, pressed flowers, snow covered hay become beautiful, but fleeting flagships: meditations on noticing and letting go. 

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