Easy listening for anxious times, torch songs for a world on fire, orchestral pop for the algorithm age: this is the twilit milieu of L.C. Franke, whose debut album Still In Bloom, releasing July 19, builds a bridge between twentieth-century nostalgia and our modern alienation. Across ten tracks of pure mood-indigo music, inspired by the jazz-club savoir faire of artists like Frank Sinatra, Scott Walker, and Ella Fitzgerald, Franke’s barstool croon smolders against a backdrop of woodwind trills and string quartet swells. It’s a musical tonic that pairs equally well with gin and general malaise—light on the ears, heavy on the heart.