Friendship | photo by Abi Reimold | courtesy of the artist
PREMIERE: Friendship looks to the high road on the new song “Sal”
Philly collective Friendship continues to find new angles and approaches into the songwriting of band leader Dan Wriggins.
While their 2015 debut You’re Going To Have To Trust Me was built largely around minimal folk in the vein of Songs Ohia and David Bazan, the new song”Sal” — the latest from the band’s sophomore album Shock Out Of Season, out next month on Orindal Records — opens on trap beats and nervey, reverberating guitar.
Once things kicks into full swing and Wriggins’ familiar deadpan vocals enter, it’s clear this is still the Friendship we know — his words take on a sense of dejected anxiety, something he notes is both personal and cynical: “Sal, how are you doing? It’s easy to tell you’re doing right if it feels like losing.”
The mood is one of despondency, a swirl of pedal steel, Rhodes, and drum machine. But, as Wriggins observes over email, “the last verse ends appealing to grace,” concluding with a moral of the story that lies somewhere between Robert Frost and Aesop’s Fables:
“When you find yourself bound to someone else, always be generous /
because you will never know what it is you do that makes the difference.”
Listen to our premiere of “Sal” below, and check out the band’s autumn tour dates beginning in Ithaca’s Goth Complex, and concluding on an Everybody Hits record release, a Harrisburg Midtown Arts Center gig with Abi Reimold and a Silent Barn show.
You can get a pre-order of Shock Out Of Season here, via Orindal Records. Listen to the album’s previous single “If You See My Beloved” here, and read our 2015 feature on Friendship here.
Tour Dates
09/26: Goth Complex – Ithaca, NY
09/27: The Flophouse – Boston, MA
09/30: Waking Windows Festival – Portland, ME
10/18: World Cafe Live (w/ Angelo De Augustine) – Philadelphia, PA
11/04: Haverford College – Haverford, PA
11/07: The Firehouse – Worcester, MA
11/08: The Apohadion Theater – Portland, ME
11/09: Sue’s – Rollinsford, NH
11/10: The Plant – Montreal, QC
11/11: The Lamp Shop – Burlington, VT
11/12: Small World Books – Rochester, NY
11/14: The Baby G – Toronto, ON
11/15: Mahall’s – Cleveland, OH
11/16: Spacebar – Columbus, OH
11/17: Everybody Hits (Release show) – Philadelphia, PA
11/18: Midtown Arts Center (w/ Abi Reimold, The Districts) – Harrisburg, PA
11/19: Silent Barn (w/ Advance Base) – Brooklyn, NY