As a rock band that walks a fine line between radio-friendly accessibility and sonic experimentation, they bring to mind a combination of Toad The Wet Sprocket, The Notwist, Radiohead, Elliott Smith, and all that was great about mid-nineties modern rock.
cystsfts.blogspot.com, July 05, 2006

...insomniacs predisposed to late-night headphone reveries will want to stick it out for the sleep-encrusted coda of Beatrice, which ushers Airshow through the closing credits like a gorgeous, Vaseline-smeared sunrise in reverse.
Myke Weiskop, Edge, June 15, 2006

(Daysucker) is the best song on Airshow, and it shows how far they've come: sort of like the Beatles' "Day Tripper" as refracted through a series of bloodied and broken mirrors, it's got a classic melancholic melody that crackles through Notwisty electro-glitch pulses, chillout channel sweeps, and last-piano-in-the-universe decay.
Boston Phoenix, June 2, 2006

Francine, the Boston quintet led by singer / songwriter Clayton Scoble (ex-Poundcake), have downshifted their sound from the spit-shined power pop that defined it around the turn of the century. They’ve become purveyors of chilling spectral pop. Now things operate by cautious design, in incandescent streaks of painted movement. Flares of guitar echo and manipulated tape, a rhythm section caught in self-sustaining Pavlovian flux. The chime of steel strings and clench of bass frequencies caught in a gentle spin cycle. Airshow, the band’s third LP, details the fruits of this gradual transition with a photographic kind of proof, its cumulative effect dreamlike and disorienting.
Zeth Lundy, PopMatters, June 13, 2006
full review

It would be easy to brand Francine with the dreaded "literate" tag, but the group's so unassuming, they hardly sound like poets in need of attention. That style makes it not only forgivable, but actually charming when Scoble later sings with a wink, "Don't make me rhyme you-know-what with 'desire.'" The joke works even as we wonder if "Beware Beatrice" is a meant to be read as a song of love, seduction, or farewell. Scoble's talent is obscuring the final reading of his texts, but his better talent is in not obscuring his songs so far that they become unrelatable. With Airshow, Francine have created an album that's much better than it's likely to get credit for being. Growers, these days, tend to be weird or folky or both, not ostensibly straightforward pop-rock that makes you think you know what's going on. It's hard to imagine Francine being bothered by that, though. After all, this is the sort of band that would rather write an ode to forgotten TV secret agent John Drake than big screen franchise man James Bond.
Justin Cober-Lake, Stylusmagazine, June 16, 2006
full review