FRIENDSHIP : LOVE THE STRANGER

1. St. Bonaventure
2. What's The Move
3. Blue Canoe
4. Hank
5. Chomp Chomp
6. Love's
7. No Way
8. Alive Twice
9. Quickchek
10. Ramekin
11. Mr. Chill
12. UDF
13. Ryde
14. Season
15. Kum & Go
16. Ugly Little Victory
17. Smooth Pursuit

Label : Merge Records

Release Date : July 29, 2022

Length : 45:09

Review (AllMusic) : The fourth album by ambling folk-rockers Friendship, Love the Stranger represents a handful of firsts for the project. With each of their albums up to this point featuring different production credits, it's the Philadelphians' first to be produced by Bradford Krieger (Horse Jumper of Love, Nova One), it's their first to credit songwriting to all four members instead of just Dan Wriggins, and it's their first to find each member playing at least four instruments -- a true collaborative effort. It's also their first album to see release after the acclaimed full-length debut of 2nd Grade, a very different indie band featuring Friendship's Peter Gill and Jon Samuels. Last but certainly not least, Love the Stranger marks Friendship's Merge Records debut after a steady climb through the indie ranks. While typically low-key and rustic in nature, with touches of (mostly) atmospheric keyboards and electronics, the album is further distinguished by the use of brief instrumentals that make up about one-third of its extensive track list. Love the Stranger begins with the ruminative "St. Bonaventure," which finds Wriggins' craggy, conversational delivery entering with the lines "Still swinging on my vine/Still getting up every day/Keep from brooding/Keep it moving/To the end of the week," over lap steel, sparse guitars, simple bass and drums, and part-time vocal harmonies. This sets the tone for much of a weary group of songs in the drudgery of the everyday, although it never quite stagnates. Lusher entries, for instance, include the crunchier "Ryde," which adopts the elemental percussion and minor intervals of a work song until it breaks open into an organ- and strings-accompanied version of heartland rock. Harmonica surfaces alongside more animated guitar lines on the relatively upbeat "Chomp Chomp," which contains the phrases "loving the stranger" and "love is a stranger" ("everywhere you go"). Elsewhere, "Alive Twice" puts spacy effects and echo at the front of mix, overtop piano, keys, and a measure-marking bass drum. As for the instrumentals, "Love's" is a rare extended-chord exploration, and "Kum & Go" incorporates Southwestern Europe-style guitar and accordion. By the time the 17-track album ends with the driving "Season" followed by the King of the Hill-quoting "Smooth Pursuit," however, it has never abandoned its back-porch feel or relentlessly existential point of view, closing on the words "Down here in the greasy mess/Hoping for the best."

Review (Pitchfork) : Human beings are not designed to seize the day and make every second count. At least that’s what I’ve learned from the music that compels us to live that way—celebration rock, festival indie, empowerment pop, all of it performed with an unsustainable urgency that concedes just how much effort it takes to go against our resting state. Take songwriter Dan Wriggins at his own words, and Friendship should be playing in any one of those styles, yet the Philadelphia quartet has carved a comfy niche making the bold argument to slow down and let the day seize you instead. “Meant to write down/What I was feeling in the moment/Thinking, ‘Man, you better get it just like it was/Or else you’re gonna forget it,’” Wriggins warbles early into Friendship’s fourth album, taking about 30 seconds to complete his thought. That’s a long moment, and not much happens in it. Wriggins dreams of getting away, not necessarily out of town. He hears that a local cathedral is being destroyed and imagines how it’ll affect the person he’s singing to. All of the real action takes place in the past and future. Depending on your identification with Friendship’s slow-and-low lifestyle, it’s also the moment that epitomizes the appeal and frustration of Love the Stranger, an album that sees a higher calling in taking it all in—especially if it’s the boring stuff. As their debut on indie institution Merge, the mere existence of Love the Stranger is a stress test on Friendship’s ethos, a 45-minute Big Moment. If Friendship’s previous album, Dreamin’, was meant to reflect the rejuvenating power of that one beer in the fridge after a long day of work, Love the Stranger is Wriggins splitting a six pack of the good shit for a celebratory toast. Each of the four core members of Friendship has their own widely varying solo projects, most notably, 2nd Grade, a band whose compact power-pop is an inverse of Friendship. Similar to Florist’s recent self-titled album, Love the Stranger is counter-programming to the pandemic’s ongoing challenge to communal artistry, rebranding a once insular project as a potluck. Each member plays at least four instruments and contributes production, while the album is split into proper songs and improvisatory interludes. The best moments blur the distinction—a sputtering, almost atonal keyboard serves as the instrumental backdrop for the intense heart-to-heart of “Alive Twice,” whereas the robust alt-country of “Hank” ends with a pawn shop guitar’s circuitry giving out, a fitting coda for a tribute to making the most out of our faulty tools. It’s a subject that Wriggins knows well. His history as a manual laborer—Maine lobster fisherman, groundskeeper—often serves as inspiration for Friendship’s lyrics, delivered in a low warble to which an aura of Real Talk is often projected. Wriggins acknowledges how starved people can be for a straight answer in a time when indie rock has absorbed and misconstrued concepts of therapeutic empathy. “I was in a bad place but you set me straight with your on-the-nose-advice,” he recalls on “Alive Twice,” later appreciating a friend who refused to play “volunteer bodyguard” in “Mr. Chill” (“I can tell you stuff I can’t tell anyone else/Because you don’t threaten to help”). Even if Friendship weren’t so enmeshed in a Philly indie scene where rawer, scrappier acts typically aspire towards rustic authenticity as they age, their pivot to outlaw country was inevitable; Wriggins’ recent Utah Phillips cover EP suggested a deeper relation to the philosophical underpinnings of the canon, and the mere mention of earbuds on “What’s the Move” negates any whiff of Lucinda Williams cosplay. Likewise, the brief interludes elaborate on Wriggins’ charming, yet unsentimental Americana: “UDF,” “Quickchek,” and “Kum & Go” mostly serve as prompts to recognize the vast stretches of the nation that can only be told apart by the incremental distinction between regional convenience stores. Friendship do not engage in world-building, instead calling greater attention to the world in which we’re all just passing through. While always endearing, over the course of Love the Stranger, they can just as often feel constrained by a documentarian approach. A pair of white Vans or a Jager nip or a truck stop T-shirt can take on a symbolic heft in Wriggins’ lyrics; other times, “apathy joins me in the booth,” and an unwashed dish of grape jelly requires a significant reach to be a metaphor for a lingering grudge. “Heading out to the bountiful fields and coming back empty-handed,” Wriggins laments on “Mr. Chill"; for all of the rewards, Wriggins can't help but admit that trying to make magic out of the mundane can be just as exhausting as living every day like it’s your last.