Description

Friendships Merge debut, Love the Stranger, moves like a country record skipping in just the right spot, leaving its fellow travelers longing for a place theyve only visited in their dreams. Guitarist Peter Gill, drummer Michael Cormier-OLeary, bassist Jon Samuels, and hawkeyed balladeer Dan Wriggins map out the groups particular, breathtaking landscape and invite the listener to share in its glory.

Between instrumental pit stops at Kum & Go and Quickchek, local references in Love the Stranger create a catalog of human perception, presented as roadside attractions. From grape jelly residue (Ramekin) to the site of a demolished cathedral (St. Bonaventure) to King of the Hill quotations (Smooth Pursuit), the records images craft a symbolic language of high and low Americana, both evocative and consistently accessible. Spending time with Love the Stranger creates a communityone in which the window between the listener and the music-maker shatters in full, until all that remains are the fragments you decide to pick up together.

Friendship is probably already your favorite bands favorite band, a long-revered IYKYK of DIY with a devoted cult following from Wawa to In-N-Out. With Love the Stranger, the Friendship universe only continues to expand and grow more open-hearted, more inviting, with every passing note. Its a record that locates the listener exactly where the listener is, and wherever that may be, makes a friend out of them, too. All said and done, the age-old maxim of Mr. Chill holds true: You be real with me and Ill be real with you.

Tracklist

1 St. Bonaventure (3:51)2 What’s the Move (2:49)3 Blue Canoe (0:21)4 Hank (4:22)5 Chomp Chomp (3:53)6 Love’s (0:55)7 No Way (3:50)8 Alive Twice (2:49)9 Quickchek (0:31)10 Ramekin (3:39)11 Mr. Chill (3:12)12 UDF (1:04)13 Ryde (3:45)14 Season (2:49)15 Kum & Go (0:44)16 Ugly Little Victory (3:28)17 Smooth Pursuit (3:08)