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Last Updated:
Feb 2nd, 2010 - 13:42:13 |
Friendly Foes
Then We Broke
"I have multiple personalities in songwriting," said Friendly Foes singer/guitarist Ryan Allen, referencing the more-fun-n-simple-style-sun bursts of the songs that served as the genesis for the trio – while comparing it to the splintery-jostle-punk pop of his other band, Thunderbirds Are Now! "I just wanted to do something that played into what I actually listened to,” including mid-90’s rough hewn indie rock and straight-up-fun-sugar-pop bands.
Lizzie Wittman’s on bass and Brad Elliott plays drums. Wittman started Cleveland-based pop band Kiddo with husband Christian Doble and relocated to Detroit a couple years ago. They met Elliott at the music store where he works and ended up enlisting him to sit in for a Kiddo show. Elliott, who once played for the Satin Peaches, later met Allen and chatted the Thunderbird up about possibly adding his skins-skills to a current batch of floating songs Allen had written between tours; when the boys moved to fill the bass position, Elliott immediately suggested the sweet-voiced bassist.
Allen freely admits, “we're not doing something fashionable right now. We're playing power-pop. The band was born out of this radical idea, instead of being weird—because that seems like what everybody wants to be—let’s just write 2 minute pop songs…maybe being totally not-radical—is radical." (Which includes mid-speech fingering air-quotes; their debut’s titled Born Radical). "You're blowing my mind …" quips Elliott, later adding of Foes: "We never tried to sound like anyone."
"This isn't the music that you make to be popular, especially here," says Allen – who never in 10 years on the scene dabbled in traditional grimy garage rock (including pop/punk projects: Tiny Steps / Red Shirt Brigade). "We got really close, really quick," he adds of their formation in November 07.
"For me," said Wittman, whose played in bands since the late 90’s, "I hadn't been in a new band in 5 years – so, to learn new material and get to know different people was super exciting."
No grandiose approach. “It was – okay, a verse, a chorus, let's just repeat 'em, fuck it; two minutes, that's a song,” said Allen.
"We'd all been there before," said Wittman. "Let's just do this and have some fun.”
"If you guys would've been like, 'Let's practice for a year and then play a show…' – I would've been like, 'alright—see ya!'" said Elliott.
The sound is unabashed pop with the clear residue of the punk ethos that each member had been involved with in their formative years; the drums are pounding and fierce at times, but other times they whirl n’ swing with a big grin; the bass drives with roused and rising grooves and the guitars blitz and burn with devastating shreds to sweet and hooky-strums. The rhythms, the riffs, the hooks – the unrelenting drive and unavoidable fun-n-fury of the sound, simply never lets go or slows down…but never blurs in some white riot torrent of punk tantrums – it's a lucid sunny glow of pop-energy. Born Radical was recorded at Tempermill Studios, with cameos from close friends.
“If Lizzie left or Brad left,” said Allen, “I would not want to do this anymore. The 3 of us are super integral to the end result and it would not be the same band without them.” Early on, “…people looked at this band as my side project or something, but it's very much the opposite. I would almost give them more credit than I would give myself, by any means…without them, the band is nothing." | RDW
Friendly Foes • 9 / 26 • Berkley Front
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