In the Quaker faith, they don’t talk about conversion, they talk of becoming convinced. Led by A.S. Wilson, Providence, Rhode Island outfit Convinced Friend takes its name from such a concept. Forming a position not via passing trend or bright epiphany but a patient weighing of the evidence. Assessing the available options then committing to what feels right.
After a childhood in an oilfield town south of New Orleans, Wilson spent a decade or more in various bands across the country, as well as a period in divinity school. But it was upon moving to New England in 2018, cut off from any musical community, that he asked the serious questions of his work and began to find his voice. The self-titled debut Convinced Friend album, out next month via Relief Map Records, channels this development to map other journeys toward convincement. Serving as a space in which to work through the available evidence, and moreover a sincere attempt to reposition personal difficulties as a source of meaning.
Today we have the pleasure of sharing the latest single, ‘Taken Apart’, a track Wilson describes as the record’s personal centrepiece. “Thematically, it captures a lot of what I was turning over in these songs as a whole,” he explains, describing how writing it triggered the rest of the record to pour forth. As though ‘Taken Apart’ was the seed from which the other songs germinated, the granule around which everything else coalesced. And it is easy to see why. With an intimate and attentive sound in the lineage of Jason Molina and David Bazan, it sees Convinced Friend push beyond the melancholic surface so common to indie rock, looking instead to explore the deep possibilities beneath.
Because more than describe the accumulated regrets and resentments of life, ‘Taken Apart’ is the beginning of an attempt to repurpose their weight. To use the mass as a kind of ballast, a grounding force which holds Wilson closer to a shared reality amid the alienating nature of existing in a society driven by work, algorithms, competition and money. All in the hope of earning, as he quotes from Jack Gilbert’s poem ‘A Brief For The Defense’: “the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world.”
Which is to say, in its attempt to fight the alluring power of self-pity in a genre too-often beholden to its charms, ‘Taken Apart’ encapsulates the central intention of Convinced Friend. To open oneself up to the world in spite of pain and suffering. To live with fondness in spite of it all. “If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,” Gilbert continues in the same poem, “we lessen the importance of their deprivation / We must risk delight.” Life might not be fair, and it is almost always hard, but to cast yourself into your own suffering is to throw yourself into an empty well. There is nothing there but damp shadows and the sounds of your own voice brought back to you, echoing from the cold stone walls.
Convinced Friend is out on the 11th November and you can pre-order it now from Bandcamp.
