Something Worth Waiting For, the sophomore album by Chicago band Friko, obviously, instantly lives up to its title; the ironic part of it is that we didn’t have to wait that long. You could call them kids when they burst onto the scene with Where we’ve been, Where we go from here, and its follow-up sounds like the sort of epically anthemic record an indie rock buzzband might deliver over a decade after their debut. Just two years later, Friko return with an expanded lineup, with vocalist/guitarist Niko Kapetan and drummer Bailey Minzenberger – who formed the band right out of high school – being joined by bassist David Fuller and guitarist Korgan Robb. While building on the raw, explosive dynamics, anthemic choruses, and infernal yearning of their first record, Something Worth Waiting For feels anything but rushed, just riding the wave of relentless touring instead of letting it subside. The John Congleton-produced LP is a leap in every way – WU LYF may have just made their triumphant comeback, Broken Social Scene have a new album on the way, but for now, all I can think about is Friko.
1. Guess
You don’t need a degree in music theory to know that power chords are naturally ambiguous, and ‘Guess’ dips in and out of that crucial third interval – eschewing it completely only when swallowed by distortion – to drive its message home. “Don’t make me guess if that’s a cry or a laugh,” begins its central refrain, repeated so many times it would sound belaboured by a less impassioned band. But fervor colours every crevice of Kapetan’s voice, which is amplified in raw, unbridled fashion right alongside the guitars. Structurally, the one-take opener keeps you guessing, too – when the explosion will happen, if it’ll resolve the tension – but its coiled-fist, clenched-jaw conviction is life-affirming. The chord ultimately underpinning the word “happy” may be resolutely minor, but wait until the final “haha” – it’s enough to put a genuine smile on your face.
2. Still Around
Carrying The Bends in its DNA with a lot more pep in its step, ‘Still Around’ is an infectious anthem of survival that overrides its own ambivalence in hopeful if somewhat morbid terms: “There’s always someone letting you down/ But still there’s salt in every kill.” The group vocals magnify the we underneath the “You’re still around,” like a band in constant motion turning their strife into something universal.
3. Choo Choo
Early Arcade Fire comparisons were apt, but let it be noted that the publication of this review coincides with the announcement of a new album by Modest Mouse, which also checks out. But Friko have a particular penchant for onomatopoeic hooks, and there’s no guessing around what reaction “choo choo” should elicit – Kapeton found himself laughing as soon as he started singing it. After declaring that there’s a “home in every hell” on ‘Still Around’, the singer pays tribute to the people who make it so; and maybe hell isn’t any place they’ve found themselves in but the bumpiness of the ride, mirrored in the song’s frenetic pace.
4. Alice
The album’s first quiet song is just as exquisitely dynamic, lifting a piano melody written by guitarist Korgan Robb when he was 16. In offering a message of reassurance to a friend, ‘Alice’ retains some of that naivety in its Alice in Wonderland-inspired metaphor about not staring into the keyhole. “I do know you/ And I know you know me,” Kapetan sings, a familiarity expressed in guitar scales. Rather than subduing the record’s communal energy, it makes it feel personable.
5. Certainty
Did I mention The Bends? The piano on ‘Certainty’ jumps forward to ‘Last Flowers’, which I promise will be my last Radiohead reference. Leaning deeper into the intimacy of the previous track, it also has a direct antecedent in Friko’s own discography, Where we’ve been, where we go from here’s own mid-album cut ‘For Ella’. But instead of eerily muted, ‘Certainty’ opts for an expansive arrangement – from indie rock veteran Jherek Bischoff – and pristine production; Congleton not only makes the song sound huge, but seems to mic and mix Kapeton’s voice in ways that modify its closeness from one voice to the next. Blurring the line between public transport daydreaming and fantastical escape, the song is too arresting in its performance to drift out of focus, from Bailey Minzenberger’s haunting solo vocal to the breathtaking verse that succeeds it.
6. Hot Air Balloon
Something Worth Waiting For is undoubtedly the product of a band determined to make a living out of music. For some bands, recording albums is merely a vehicle for touring; ‘Hot Air Balloon’ goes a step further to denounce “singers and painters and all and bands with their pretty songs” (I especially love how the subsequent “girls with their discoteques” is accentuated by a funky guitar chord), so sick of any performance of beauty that it’s desparate for the pure thing, which in this case involves setting a hot air balloon. Music’s still the medium, but sometimes you need to distance yourself from what you’re betting your life on in order to feel alive. I wonder if they’ll take the Snail Mail route and actualize their dreams via a music video.
7. Seven Degrees
“For a long time I thought the saying was ‘seven degrees of separation’ and not ‘six,'” Kapetan explained of the album’s lead single, whose playfulness hardly masks its longing for connection. It begins as a “Dad once told me” kind of song, which makes its classic rock sensibility feel like a tribute – Kapetan’s father was, in fact, an aspiring musician. And as someone who also grew up in a very Greek family, I recognize the social logic passed on to him, and the poetic desperation that follows: “Now I have searched and I have crawled/ I have drank at every bars/ But still I sit and weep.” There comes a point when it no longer seems like a game of chance, but time; so you wait.
8. Something Worth Waiting For
After a middle stretch heavy on – but certainly not bogged down by – more understated songs, the title track not only restores Friko’s dynamism but encapsutes the best elements of the album: the wall of noise that first bursts out on ‘Guess’, the triumphant backing vocals on ‘Still Around’, the unyielding sprawl of ‘Alice’, all while running off the yearning of ‘Seven Degrees’. For Friko, the vagueness of something – just like somewhere and someone on their debut – is what makes the singers’ persistence so piercing. It’ll always come up short. And so ‘Something’ is the perfect penultimate track; it would never totally satisfy as a closer, but justifies the wait right here.
9. Dear Bicycle
The modes of transportation mentioned on SWWF never position our protagonist behind the wheel, but here he’s at least gripping onto the handlebars – metaphorically, of course. If anything, the bicycle is a personified reminder of youth, calling back to him in a slow burn of lilting piano, melodic bass, atmospheric cymbals, and even – gasp – synths. Another pummeling crescendo is teased, but the song itself retreats back into its shell, into childhood. “I was empty then, I’m not empty now,” Kapetan sings. Sometimes, you don’t realize you’re out of the void until there’s another one clawing its way through your body. “The kids are alright/ But then where they’re going nobody knows” (from ‘Still Around’) is a refrain that’s probably going to reverberate throughout their even more probably auspicious discography, but Friko seem increasingly less concerned about the uncertainty of the destination: it’s always going to be dirty and stingy as hell, and there’s always going to be home in it.
