As you'd expect from a scene named after a Neu! song, the young bands emerging from Chicago's Hallogallo collective see themselves as torchbearers for previous generations of cutting-edge rock. Friko fit the mold, as an early couple checking out '90s indie rock, post-punk, Leonard Cohen and, why not, Chopin. Someone who came of age in the early 2000s might also hear Saddle Creek's all-hands, Friko's band-drama drama—or the blog-rock bands that made guitars and drums exciting again in the age of mashups, or perhaps liveliest play at an advanced CMJ showcase or Empty Bottle party. But even if Friko remembers the sound of those days, their debut album, Where we've been, where do we go from here it's not just a flashback. It carries the spirit forward, confirming that indie rock, as a style and ethos, can still feel like the most exciting thing a young person could get into.
Despite its bullish title, Where we were it sweeps not as a monolithic statement of purpose, but rather as a greatest hits collection. It's not an understatement to say that it could be just as enjoyable on a shuffle. Almost every song is designed to either start the finish a live set, whether at SXSW, Schubas, or even Bonnaroo. Only the finale, “Cardinal”, is locked in sequence as an acoustic comedown. Friko's songs open majestically and build tension all the way through their equally majestic closes. these are not just hymns in the abstract sense, they are theme songs. And even when the lyrics turn desperate (“It doesn't get better, it just gets twice as bad,” from the bittersweet, tightly wound “Get Numb to It!”), Niko Kapetan's swashbucking trill recasts the theme as a hero's journey.
“Twenty years I've been over this place/You could smell the iron from the room,” Kapetan sings as the album's prelude, a strange image that conjures up the smell of blood, of trains, of something that should is in motion. From that point on, Where we were it might as well be a blues album, given how much time Friko spends at a crossroads, forced to choose between struggle or complacency, life or death, long range or home.
Twin Peaks' “Where We've Been” and “Crimson to Chrome” cleverly replicate the pervasive drive to get out of a groove and into the groove, hitting strikingly similar melodies until the arrangements open up. “Chemical” sounds like it learned its riff from the Walkmen's “The Rat” – and also, more importantly, that a song can be full volume for four minutes. When Kapetan shouts the title over and over, the band shifts into what sounds like a truncated time signature, as if they need to hit the chorus as soon as possible before they run out of studio time. Even a song as blatantly bleak as “Get Numb to It!” can work as a rock celebration, the a cappella finale sounds like a gang of drunken football fans singing their school fight song hours after the home team has walked off the field in triumph.
