This album’s release on firebrand label, Richter Collective, is akin to Talking Heads reforming and releasing a magnum opus on DFA. The label has become known for putting out snapshots of the island’s best hardcore bands at their most coherent – no mean feat when you’re talking about mad bastards like Adebisi Shank. Big fish, the pond has nevertheless effected the band’s music. Friendship is the most legible, youthful, energetic accomplishment in an already exemplary career.
It might seem like a slight to the music, but certainly the most notable improvement on the band’s offical fourth LP is the production. With a wider range than a Wyoming buffalo ranch, each jazzy-krauty-don’t-call-it-post-rock-please track is totally immersive. The album is more pliable than previous efforts, and indeed most other records within the same genre as it – less concerned with mood than enterprising dynamics, and its reliance on liquid rather than monolithic grooves makes it indeed closer to the proclaimed funk influence than the more metal-tinged direction of before. Rather than quite-loud-quite-loud, song structure is more intense-chilled-intense-chilled-dancemotherfuckersdance!, and Egan’s bass and O’Connor’s synth work is busier than ever, buffering the ever-amorous relationship between Byrne and Bolger’s noodling, harmonic guitars. Black Apple’s the best lead-off track you could hope for, while Rubber Up bends into an almost soul-like shape. Cloud Beard is an I Am Brazil-styled chill-out, Hex is a moment of clarity, and Smile More might rip out your kidneys. There is no permutation, essentially, left uncalculated here – and it’s a whole lot more accessible than all the big words in this review would have you think.
We’ll let you in on a little secret – sometimes we rate Irish albums on a skewed scale. It’s a smaller market, with fewer examples of true excellence, meaning good is sometimes upgraded to very good. Friendship is excellent, and can therefore be upgraded to sublime. Or at the very least, fucking awesome.
Words: Daniel Gray
See also: Don Caballero – For Respect [Touch & Go], Bats – Red In Tooth And Claw [Richter Collective], Tortoise – Millions Now Living Will Never Die [Thrill Jockey]
