I was turned on to Manchester fuzz pop outfit Strange Friends by Filip over at START-TRACK (also Z Tapes head honcho and all round cool guy). The band’s latest EP Summer Recordings is a collection of five home-recorded songs supposedly about “losing friends, being brave and millennial dread”.
‘Forever nervous, man’ is a great opening, catchy indie rock wrapped in lots of fuzz and heartsick wooing background vocals. It’s followed by ‘Burt Squires’ with its big echoey kick drum and lo-fi next-door vocals, all backed up with the constant racket of noisy guitars. ‘nothing’ is a hazy and shimmeringly poignant instrumental, before ‘king ashbeer’ rises from its ashes, dense walls of fuzz and squealing guitars and echoed vocals. The EP ends on ‘ssssshakin’ which has downbeat but not deadbeat vocals behind an acoustic strum, all wrapped up in a warm and reassuring lo-fi hum.
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Summer Recordings is a really promising collection of songs and makes me very interested to hear what Strange Friends do next. Part Male Bonding, part Gorgeous Bully, the EP hopefully marks the introduction to a band we’ll be hearing a lot more from in the future.
You can get Summer Recordings now as a name-your-price download or super-limited cassette tape (UK only and for the criminally low price of just two English pounds!) via the Strange Friends Bandcamp page.