A project launched in Chicago in 2019,
Friko
's profile rose steadily through bookings at famed local venues, festival appearances including Bonnaroo, prominent playlisting, and favorable press coverage on the strength of their early short-form releases. The band's debut album,
Where we've been, Where we go from here
, manages to live up to the hype thanks to consistently vulnerable, impassioned material that oscillates between desperate ballads and cathartic rockers with memorable choruses. This effect is maximized by the high-strung delivery of bandleader
Niko Kapetan
, who effortlessly navigates the album's high-contrast sequencing.
was produced by
(the duo of
Kapetan
and drummer
Bailey Minzenberger
) and
Scott Tallarida
and recorded mostly live in the studio -- and sounds like it. One of the more striking aforementioned contrasts occurs with the midway pairing of "For Ella" and "Chemical," in which "For Ella" is a ghostly, half-whispered, strings-accompanied piano ballad with a classical-romantic vibe and dramatic musical twists (sudden crescendos, close-harmony backing vocals, atmospheric noise) that, collectively, could pass for a timeless movie theme. "Chemical" is a howling, squealing discharge of a song that nonetheless remains highly harmonic. It, in turn, is followed by the reflective, midtempo "Statues," one of the album's melancholic earworms. Elsewhere, "Get Numb to It!" is a late-arriving outright banger with headbanging drums, a soaring singalong chorus, and lyrics that include "do do, do do do" as well as an anthemic "No, it never gets better/It just gets twice as bad¿So you better get numb to it/Get numb to it." The rest of
WWBWWGFH
is just as nihilistic, a potentially appealing trait given the global tenor of its time. ~ Marcy Donelson