Chicago band Friko on finding breakout success and their second album 'Something Worth Waiting For' • Interview • DIY Magazine

For many artists, their early years are run on dreams. Idealised scenarios of headline shows, debut albums, their inaugural time hitting the road. A taut quiver of gleaming firsts; sharp, auspicious, and perfect. But like military operations, construction projects, or even something as simple as baking a cake, all great plans can go awry upon first contact with the enemy that is reality - something Chicago indie-rock quartet Friko know only too well.

“The way I manifested it was that even being able to play Europe was like a dream,” remembers vocalist and guitarist Niko Kapetan, as he phones in on a grimace of an Illinois morning alongside guitarist Korgan Robb. “We played this venue in a basement in Manchester,” the latter quickly adds, “and every time the train went over, all the amps got WAY quieter.” The pair laugh before Korgan notes: “that was also the show where I looked down on the ground and there was a guitar with zero strings on it - not just one broken string, ZERO strings.”

Melding nascent rock star fantasies with the gritty and often mundane actualities of a professional music career has been something Friko had to learn quickly following the sleeper-hit success of their debut LP, ‘Where we’ve been, Where we go from here’. Self-funded and self-recorded, that album broached heady themes across incisive yet elegiac lyrics of tumultuous romance, anxiety, and the pendulum swing between nostalgic longing for the security of the past and an uncertain look towards the mist of the future.

Infusing the confessional songwriting of Bright Eyes with the soaring theatrics of Black Country, New Road and the blurry guitar work of early Modest Mouse, Friko’s debut arrived to a sober but positive reception at the beginning of 2024. Cut to the close of the year, and ‘Where we’ve been, Where we go from here’ was firmly planted in many industry heads’ AOTY lists. “We were just a local Chicago band and everything felt like a steady build,” Niko says humbly. “I mean, it’s not like we’ve made any money from it,” he laughs, sipping from a mug as the light begins to break through the grey of the morning.

“We were just a local Chicago band and everything felt like a steady build.”

— Niko Kapetan

Beginning as a duo, Niko and drummer Bailey Minzenberger tangentially crossed paths in their high school music theory class. It was only after graduation they became properly acquainted, playing in each other’s groups in their city’s close-knit DIY scene. “It was just so welcoming,” Niko recalls, “because even bigger bands like Whitney, or Finom, or Twin Peaks were all so nice to us when we were in high school.” Before joining the group as a touring member and later a permanent fixture, Korgan had spent years plugging away in Nashville before returning to Chicago. “I was a fan of the band before I joined, [and] it was super inspiring to see so many people just completely committed to art,” he declares, his earnestness about the Chicago scene palpable and sincere. “I didn’t see that in Nashville.”

Friko’s slow-burn success was soon met with the inevitable spectre of extensive touring that arrives in the wake of positive press: hard-nosed grinds across the US where $200 fees, infinite fields of Midwestern corn and clapped-out vans seemed unceasing. Upon reaching Europe and Asia, Ibis hotels, loose crowds and the endless juggling of alternative power supplies for pedal boards seemed a luxury for the group. “London was a really fun night!” beams Niko. “I took the double decker bus with some friends, that was crazy!”

While the excitement of finally ‘making it’ became a material reality, countless hours spent crammed into vehicles away from loved ones and home comforts began to breed questions of whether what the band was doing was worthwhile. It was in these moments of perpetual motion that thoughts about purpose came to the fore, and were subsumed into the construction of their upcoming second LP, ‘Something Worth Waiting For’.

“[The album] is about striving towards something that might not be there at all, or is always going to be just out of reach.”

— Niko Kapetan

If Friko’s debut embodied the tumult of waning adolescence and the anxieties of the future, ‘Something Worth Waiting For’ confronts this directly, questioning whether things striven for - career success, artistic fulfillment, personal expression - will truly fill the omnipresent hole in all of us. “It’s about striving towards something that might not be there at all or is always going to be just out of reach,” Niko states after a pause, remembering late night conversations at home with his partner. “There is always that emptiness no matter what you’re trying to fill… that’s definitely a design flaw in being human.”

Donning a bolder, shinier and slicker skin, callused by lofty support slots for The Flaming Lips and Modest Mouse, ‘Something Worth Waiting For’ is brave in its diagnosis of existential malaise but hopeful in its search for solace. Where ‘Choo Choo’ finds purpose in the vagabond camaraderie of band life and ‘Certainty’ calls out for something more than everyday drudgery, ‘Hot Air Balloon’ is a snapshot of how true euphoria and beauty can be found in the fleeting moments of something as simple as witnessing hot air balloons rise on a summer’s morning.

“You’ll never quite feel like you’re there,” Niko reflects as he picks at the bones of Friko’s latest production. “It’s just [about] the built-in sadness that comes with everything and trying not to be so big-scale about it - trying to put it on a smaller scale. It’s a complicated feeling; I guess that’s why we wrote songs about it,” he says, with a shrug.

As such, the band have undergone a recalibration of late, wherein they’re now reconsidering purpose and meaning and looking elsewhere for fulfilment; the full-time addition of Korgan and bassist David Fuller has been one place they’ve found it. Recalling the recording of album opener ‘Guess’, Korgan explains: “The track was one take - fully live - and I was closing my eyes, and could feel it in my bones the minute Niko started singing that it was going to be the take.” Niko jumps in excitedly: “And then he hits me with the psychic connection! He was in my brain, feeding me the lyrics.”

Upon seeing the highways of an industry driven by incessant churn, Friko’s decision to move slower through the B-roads and grasp at the smaller beauties of connection, people and meaningful art has proved infinitely more fruitful. Gone are the dreams and notions of success - for Friko, these are no longer real. Reality is in the people you are with and the memories you create with them.

“David said something really beautiful the other day,” Korgan interjects. “He said how, when you’re touring and the bits have derailed to the point where they don’t make any sense at all, some of the best moments are just on the way to the gig - that’s the real beauty, in the moment.”

‘Something Worth Waiting For’ is out 24th April via ATO.

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