James Franco’s Art School Duo Daddy Prep Smiths-Inspired Album
Proving once again there’s no artistic medium he won’t dabble in, James Franco is prepping for the release of Let Me Get What I Want, the new Smiths-inspired album from Daddy, his art school project with producer-composer Tim O’Keefe. While the LP, which features original Smiths bassist Andy Rourke playing on every track, will drop sometime next year,Vice premiered the first single and video, “This Charming Man,” a hazy, grooving track spliced with swirling post-punk guitar lines.
The song is accompanied by a video reminiscent of the hyper-saturated, effects-laden, found-footage aesthetics of the chillwave years. The duo shot a video for every song on Let Me Get What I Want, with a painting by Franco appearing at the beginning of each.
The 10 clips can either be watched on their own, or as an hour-long film that will tell a cohesive story about the relationships of three characters: Tom, Erica and Sterling (“This Charming Man” focuses on Tom). Despite the narrative, the film doesn’t necessarily have a beginning or end, with the videos designed to seamlessly loop, so the final one connects directly back to the first.
If the concept of Let Me Get What I Want wasn’t already a head-scratcher, the entire project is an exhibition in going meta, art school-style. The LP was inspired by two sections from Franco’s latest poetry collection titled, “Poems Inspired by Smiths’ Songs,” and Franco and O’Keefe decided to use these reactions as a jumping off point, turning the poems-based-on-songs back into new songs, all of which will bare the same titles as Franco’s poems (several of which are the same as the original Smiths songs).
Franco and O’Keefe began making music as Daddy after meeting at the Rhode Island School of Design’s Digital+Media MFA program, releasing their first few EPs in 2012 and 2013, some of which are available to stream on their SoundCloud.