Air Mail’s “Won’t You” is a woozy, bleary-eyed ode to the American Midwest

By the time he finished developing the songs that would become his debut album, a.m. Continental, Niko Francis needed a break from the country that inspired it. His first solo effort as Air Mail, as he tells it, is all about his deep but exhausting love of the American Midwest. It's expansive beauty, and the climate of destruction lingering over it.

Ahead of his album's release, due 20 March, and his latest single “Won’t You,” Francis is camped out in the mountains of New Zealand where he’s taken an ecological conservation job, spending most of his days off the grid entirely. “These songs are my attempt at trying to make sense of the crazy world we live in, trying to find beauty amidst massive amounts of harm,” he says. “I’m hoping these songs are a touchpoint of connection in a world that can feel disconnected and scary.”

“Won’t You” is a swirling, woozy cut of indie folk built for a backcountry dive’s last call. Every guitar line twinkles like a mirror ball, each lyric a plea for love that survives uncertainty, for deep devotion when everything seems fleeting. The track shares some DNA with Light Upon the Lake-era Whitney, coated with AM radio haze, decidedly American. It’s the sort of song that conjures the exact expanse of road that inspired it.

The album marks a departure from Francis’ work with A-Go-Go, a Columbus garage rock outfit that favours cleaner, more contemporary sounds – a.m. Continental is telephoned in from a bygone era. “I try to ignore what’s happening trend-wise and just hone in on what’s going on within me,” Francis says. “I feel drawn toward music that feels timeless, whether it was released this year or 50 years ago.”

Elsewhere on the record, music veers from a haunted, scuzzy shuffle reminiscent of Julee Cruise, to full-throated Dylanish crooning. It's all part of a loving portrait of the countryside that shaped Francis’ young adulthood, equal parts lush and lonely. There’s exhaustion in these songs, but an acceptance too: you can’t ever really leave the place that made you. Even as he drops the album from the other side of the world, Francis says he knows he’ll be back. It’s where his people are, it’s home.

“Won’t You” bottles that feeling. For all the trouble in the air on a.m. Continental, the track insists on meeting humanity, meeting America, where it’s at. We might be behind all sorts of ugliness, but the natural world, in all its grandeur, is nothing without the people in it, who might be waiting to love you.