Neu Get To Know… Friko

You’re based in Chicago - what do you think of the music scene there at the moment? As a city, it’s got a rich musical history - do you think it’s changed much since you first started out?

I think the Chicago scene is one of the best in the country at the moment. There are bands just out of high school, bands around our age, and bands in their early thirties, all making different kinds of music but all sharing a similar community. I grew up listening to The Smashing Pumpkins and Liz Phair so I had an adoration for ‘90s Chicago music growing up, and seeing so many people foster a scene in Chicago at this moment has been so inspiring. We started out in 2019 right before COVID, and back then, there were endless house venues and DIY spaces. Right after COVID it was definitely dead for a while, but as of the past two years, places have been popping up for new smaller bands to play, as well as venues like SCHUBAS, Empty Bottle, Metro, and Thalia being super supportive to newer bands.

What’s your earliest musical memory?

My earliest musical memories were probably listening to Led Zeppelin and The Beatles in the car with my dad. We would listen and discuss all the little parts we liked and I would often sing harmonies along with the recordings. My dad was a hobby musician growing up but was always very supportive.

In terms of performing, I remember my first show was on drums and I was playing ‘Superstition’ by Stevie Wonder with a cover band from my music school when I was about 12. That same show, we also did a five person cover of ‘Wipe Out’ with everyone playing floor toms standing up - it was sick.

Your debut album manages to balance often heavily layered arrangements with moments of real delicacy and emotional fragility, and you’ve said that landing on the final recording of opener ‘Where We’ve Been’ made you cry. Why do you think it had this effect? How do you go about translating this emotion in a live setting?

The performance of ‘Where We’ve Been’ that’s on the record had that effect because of that specific night. The song didn’t have the ending part (“Where we’ve been / Where we go from here / Take your weight and throw your arms around me”), and when we were doing the first few takes it didn’t feel right. Then the producer, our longtime friend Scott Tallarida, came in and just told us that the song wasn’t done and we needed to have a final climax moment. We discussed it for about 20 minutes and then without rehearsing, we performed the take that’s on the album. That specialness of it being our first time playing it that way is what made it so emotional for us, and probably made that song our favourite from the record.

In a live setting it’s honestly easier, because we played the songs live on the album so it’s just about how much our heads are in that certain show on that given night. Sometimes we’re tired from driving seven hours a day, and some nights it feels like we’re playing the best show of our lives. It really all just depends on the day.

One of Friko’s perhaps more unlikely inspirations is classical music - can you tell us a bit more about why this is? As two seemingly disparate sounds, what do you think are the parallels between the genre and your work?

I think that inspiration mostly came through on the song ‘For Ella’. Bailey and I are just lovers of composers like Chopin, Liszt, Schubert, and Debussy, and the feelings we get from their pieces are just constantly feeding our creativity.

The main parallel between classical music and our music would probably be the dynamics. Live and on the record, we love to go between extremely heavy stuff like ‘Chemical’ into songs like ‘For Ella’ or ‘Half As Far’. Classical music tends to do this almost to the point of being humorous, and we want our music to feel like that too.

The expanded edition of ‘Where we’ve been, where we go from here’ features a cover of My Blood Valentine’s ‘When You Sleep’. Why did this feel like the right track to put your own spin on? And what one Friko track would you be most interested to see another artist cover?

In 2020, I was learning ‘No Name #3’ by Elliot Smith on guitar and started singing the ‘When You Sleep’ melody over it, and realised it worked really well, ha! I was doing a lot of stuff on my Rascal four track at the time and I decided to just record a full cover on there because I thought the concept of combining those songs would be cool, and they’re also two of my favourite songs ever.

There have been a lot of people at shows saying they covered ‘Get Numb To It!’, which makes me so happy, but I’d love to see how people would cover ‘Where We’ve Been’ - I feel like there are a lot of directions you can go with that one.

Tell us the best advice you’ve ever been given, and the advice you’d tell your younger self.

I think the best advice I’ve ever been given regarding music is to not let yourself get too dark when recording or playing live. While making this record, there were many moments where I let myself get very dark and it didn’t help the music or the band. Although you need that side of yourself to make art, it isn’t productive to always sulk in it, because art is about overcoming those feelings - that’s what makes it good. I would probably tell my younger self exactly this.

Finally, DIY are coming round for dinner - what are you making?

Ooooh, since y’all are from the UK I’d probably make a classic American hot dog, corn, and rosemary garlic potatoes on our grill in the backyard of our apartment. 

The expanded edition of ‘Where we’ve been, Where we go from here’ is out on 22nd November via ATO Records. 

Tags: Get to Know, Neu, Friko