Philadelphia band Friendship have released a new album, Caveman Wakes Up, their second for Merge Records. The record – bleary, somber, and diaristically evocative – started taking shape in the summer of 2023; frontman Dan Wriggins had just left the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and the breakdown of a relationship led him to crash for several weeks at Jake Lenderman and Wednesday’s Karly Hartzman’s home in North Carolina. Joined by guitarist Peter Gill, drummer Michael Cormier-O’Leary, and bassist Jon Samuels, Wriggins returned to Philly to lay down the album in five days with engineer Jeff Ziegler (Mary Lattimore, War on Drugs).
He tracked vocals with engineer Bradford Kreiger, while organ, violin (Jason Calhoun), and flute (Adelyn Strei) were recorded by Lucas Knapp in a West Philadelphia church. The singles ‘All Over the World’ and ‘Resident Evil’ arrived ahead of the release.
An album for sleeping and waking, walking and driving, hunting and fishing, for loitering outside a roadhouse on the haunted tundra. Okay in elevators, not great for dinner. On “Caveman Wakes Up”, Friendship’s second album for Merge Records, the band’s historically capacious definition of country music grows wider still. Shambolic guitars are offset by flute pads, bleary poetry is set against a Motown rhythm section, a song about Jerry Garcia and First Lady Betty Ford fades out with a drum solo, like if Talk Talk came from a dingy Philadelphia basement and was fronted by James Tate. Songwriter Dan Wriggins’ ragged baritone cuts through eleven murky, swirling country-rock songs with profound lyrical substance and sincerity. Like an alarm clock incorporated into the edge of a dream, “Caveman Wakes Up” belongs equally to the conscious and subconscious mind, fraught with background, steeped in reference and experimentation, delivered casually and as a dire warning, dedicated, above all, to music’s creative soul.
“Caveman Wakes Up” is out May 16th on Merge Records
Peter Gill: guitar, synth, vibraphone, vox
Michael Cormier-O’Leary: drums, percussion, piano, organ, synth, vibraphone, drum machine, string and woodwind arrangement
Jon Samuels: bass, synth
Dan Wriggins: vox, guitar
Adelyn Strei: flute, clarinet
Jason Calhoun: violin
The Fat Angel Sings 