December 4, 2017 | 0 Comments

FRIENDSHIP – SHOCK OUT OF SEASON is at Top 200 Radio Now!!!

I am so excited that my final priority of 2017 is Friendship, from Philadelphia (via Owen Ashworth’s Orindal Records)! This record is SO GOOD. I’m super lucky to get to get to associate myself even this little bit with it. Also their band name is very on brand, both for The Band Mom and for the fact that it went for adds at Thanksgiving. Pretty great. AND(!!!), this band includes not one but TWO former college radio music directors (sup WVAU and WICB!!). It really belongs here!! My first impression was that the sound falls right in between the music of Mark Kozelek (Sun Kil Moon) and that of Ashworth’s own (Advance Base/Casiotone for the Painfully Alone). Introspective folky bedroom pop with lots of interesting musical touches and conversational-storytelling lyrics. Stereogum and BrooklynVegan are already on board, so what are you waiting for?!

This record is my second in a row here that’s DIGITAL-ONLY, so don’t wait for a hard copy, but run don’t walk to yr nearest link from your email (or check in with me for that if you work at a radio station and don’t have it) and snag that thing today! (You could also start by checking out a gorgeous new video, shot on 35mm in their hometown of Philly, if yr so inclined.) (Incidentally: sorry so many of my records lately have been download-only. I know that while for some of you it’s your preference, it’s harder on many of you, and it’s not my preference or my first recommendation to my bands – if you’re new to The Band Mom, I want to assure you it’s not my norm. But sometimes it’s the only option to make it work for the band financially, and if it’s a choice between that or not sending it to radio at all, I hope you can understand why it goes this way! Help prove me right that it’s still worth doing it this way, by downloading and spinning this wonderful work!!)

friendship - shock out of season cover

FRIENDSHIP

SHOCK OUT OF SEASON

Orindal Records

Friendship is a Philadelphia-based band currently comprised of Dan Wriggins, Peter Gill, Mike Cormier, Evangeline Krajewski, and Jon Samuels.

Gill, Cormier, and Wriggins, all originally from Maine, began performing as Friendship in 2015, when they shared an apartment in Philadelphia. They released an LP, You’re Going to Have to Trust Me, on Burst and Bloom Records in late 2015, and an EP, F/V Hope in 2017 with Philadelphia’s Sleeper Records.

Friendship’s new album, Shock Out of Season, comes out November 3, 2017 on Orindal Records (the label run by Owen Ashworth of Advance Base/Casiotone for the Painfully Alone). It is a collection of songs about work, friends, love, and loneliness, lifted by synthesizer, pedal steel, and Rhodes piano, and set against a combination of live and programmed drums.

Wriggins’ lyrics reflect conversation, humor, and calamity. They stress his characters’ unmediated involvement in each other’s lives, which transcends and is frustrated by their failed communications. These tensions are expanded by the band’s twisted articulation of Americana – waves of ambient pedal steel, droning synthesizers and drum machines, vibraphone, electric piano, and percussion surge and fall alongside minimal guitar and bass patterns.

RIYL: Mark Kozelek/Sun Kil Moon, Vic Chesnutt, Bill Callahan/(smog), Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Lambchop, David Bazan/Pedro the Lion, Advance Base/Casiotone for the Painfully Alone, Majical Cloudz, Florist, Lomelda, Told Slant

Start With: 1, 2, 3, 5 FCC 6, 7

Photo credit: Bob Sweeney

“Friendship are a Philly-based band centered around Dan Wriggins’ narrative pull. His stories tend to be long-winded but confined to small moments, and the rest of the band…play into this in an unobtrusive but all-encompassing way.” – Stereogum

“Coupled with Wriggins’ conversational, almost stream of consciousness-style delivery, they manage to create a kind of flipped Americana. If classic folk rock is a space in which an artist can align the incongruities of their lives into some pure, cathartic communication on a channel to which everyone is tuned, then Friendship’s version is the sound when the various parts never quite match up, the narrator left to broadcast on his own frequency in the hope that someone might receive his garbled drift. “ – Various Small Flames

Friendship is a band based in Philadelphia that’s been dubbed “alt” or freak folk by some, experimental by many. Their sounds range from lo-fi DIY, to rambling lyrics that rival The Mountain Goats. Comparisons aside, Wriggins’ lyrics are all at once deadpan and sentimental, delivered with an attention to wordplay and an apprehension that keeps you on your toes. – Paste

“quiet, humble-yet-deep indie pop” – BrooklynVegan