stream: Friendly Foes touring to support “Born Radical”
Detroit-area powerpoppers Friendly Foes-the trio of singer-guitarist Ryan Allen, bassist Lizzie Wittman, and drummer Brad Elliott-are hitting the road to support their first full-length album, Born Radical, a thirteen-song set which will be released Jan. 13 on Gangplank Records. (The actual album-album, that is. The digital version has been available on iTunes and elsewhere since the beginning of October.)
Inspired as much by seventies punk-songwriters like Nick Lowe and Elvis Costello as by the glory days of nineties indie rock (Superchunk, Guided By Voices, Chisel)-with a healthy dose Replacements-style bass fuzz thrown in for good measure-Friendly Foes craft rag-tag, rough-around-the-edges rock songs that do away with pretense. They take the direct route to rock and roll: it goes through the dive bar, not through the football stadium.
To that considerable list of ingredients above, add a pinch of R.E.M. as well, and you’ve got Allen’s guitar recipe for the get-off-the-junk-before-I-dump-you song “Get Yr Shit Together”: riff the verse, pick out the chorus. (No bridge? No problem.) Those destined to be Foes fans will be enchanted from the very first chord-a fat slice of Tarantino cheese, from the soundtrack to the heist-gone-wrong movie you haven’t seen yet. One worries that in their dread of “pretense” the Friendly Foes will end up sacrificing too much to schlock (would it have killed them to spell “your” correctly?). But if you’ve got this kind of instinct for pop deliciousness, “Yeah!” is the only backup vocal you need.
stream: Friendly Foes - Get Yr Shirt Together
from Born Radical
The Foes’ tour will mainly involve stops in their native Michigan, plus a one-night jaunt to Chicago, but in December they’ll play two nights in New York-and then they’ll have to take a bridge. Wish them luck.
Tracklisting:
01 Full Moon Morning
02 Get Yr Shit Together
03 Couch Surfing
04 My Body (is a Strange Place to Live)
05 Breakfast Burritos
06 Get Ripped
07 Walk Home in the Dark
08 Epic Jamb
09 Wild (Once In Awhile)
10 Dying to Survive
11 Lil’ Tiger
12 Criminal Justice
13 Rush the Land
Friendly Tour:
11-21 The Blind Pig - Ann Arbor, MI #
11-22 The Beat Kitchen - Chicago, IL *
12-05 Lager House - Detroit, MI +
12-06 The Blind Pig - Ann Arbor, MI ^
12-09 The Bell House - Brooklyn, NY %
12-10 The Studio @ Webster Hall - New York, NY $
12-12 The Factory - Rochester, MI @
01-17 Round Robin Night - Mt. Pleasant, MI =
* with Sebastien Grainger and the Mountains (ex-Death From Above 1979) & Metrovox
# with The Dirtbombs & Electric Fire Babies
+ with New Grenada (Album Release Show!) & Allan James and the Cold Wave
^ with Lightning Love (CD Release Show!) & Charlie Slick
% with Frankpollis & Your Skull, My Closet
$ with The Jealous Girlfriends & Frances
@ with Citizen Smile (EP release show!) & The Orange Marsupials
= with Deastro, Benny Stoofy, Ultramark, Crash Sunday, Stereoluxx, & Valley Ghost
