It’s one thing to want people to sing along, but Friko will tell you that it’s another thing entirely when they actually do. Over the past 12 months, the Chicago duo have watched from stages big and small as their songs have taken hold in thousands of throats, reflecting back an earnest desire for each explosive gang vocal or aching melody to spark a sense of togetherness. It gets them every time. “Playing in this band, sharing this music, and engaging in community is healing for us,” drummer Bailey Minzenberger says. “The goal is to have people feel better walking out than they did walking in.”
Upon its arrival in February last year, Friko’s debut album ‘Where We’ve Been, Where We Go From Here’ became an indie-rock lightning rod for anyone searching for something authentic and honest in a society more closely attuned to snark and apathy. Splitting the difference between the scuzzy noise of Yo La Tengo, the triumphant melancholy of the Replacements, and the gut-punch anthemics of the Hotelier, it came to resemble an old-fashioned sleeper hit after catching light in their hometown’s vibrant DIY scene. Since its release, its ability to inspire emotional somersaults has only gained momentum, translating into euphoric shows thousands of miles away.
Friko on The Cover of NME. Credit: Alexa Viscius for NME
Friko’s music can be florid and dramatic, but crucially, it’s also prescient and intense. It digs into the fear that hope is meaningless in the modern world and turns it outwards in pursuit of helping someone in the crowd get up the next day and put one foot in front of the other. Guitarist and vocalist Niko Kapetan meshes plaintive introspection with a broken but unbowed yowl as he untangles this knot of feelings, finding joy in a good hook and perspective in even the lowest of lows.
At every turn, there is a desire to be that hand reaching out from the void, seeking a direct connection. “There’s nothing worse than when you feel like some vocalist is trying to sound smarter than you,” Kapetan says. “I love poets who can also put things in plain terms. As a band, we love musicians who are incredible at what they do, but we like to keep the youthful energy up. That keeps us honest.”
“Playing in this band and engaging in community is healing for us” – Bailey Minzenberger
Taken together, this combination has allowed for a tangible sense of catharsis to permeate their gigs, with a transfer of energy between band and audience night after night. You can’t fake that. As a result, tracks from ‘Where We’ve Been, Where We Go From Here’ have been bent, broken and reshaped in the band’s minds over and over. “While we’re travelling, we discuss how we’re going to make them better,” Kapetan says. “The songs live night by night now.”
“They grow with you,” Minzenberger agrees. “‘Where We’ve Been’, for example, is very, very sad. But the experience of recording it changed my relationship with it. We ended up reworking the ending at the last second – the take on the record is the first time we played it that way. We all broke down. It was really special and heavy in a beautiful way. When we play that now, I think about that moment.”
Bailey Minzenberger of Friko. Credit: Alexa Viscius for NME
To create an environment where this sort of shared vulnerability is the norm requires a lot of trust. From the outside, that seems to stem from deep roots and shared experiences. Kapetan and Minzenberger went to the same high school in Evanston, about 20 miles north of downtown Chicago, but walked its halls in parallel to one another until falling into a shared orbit at the urging of Jack Henry, a mutual friend who’d later engineer ‘Where We’ve Been, Where We Go From Here’.
It was Henry who reached out to ask Kapetan to cover bass in Morinda, Minzenberger’s old band. It was also Henry who first played Kapetan’s 2019 demo collection ‘Burnout Beautiful’ to Minzenberger, sparking the mutual admiration that would eventually pull the two together alongside ex-bassist Luke Stamos in Friko. Coming out of the suburbs, though, they initially felt like they were on the outside looking in at a landscape buzzing with serrated, adventurous new sounds.
Niko Kapetan of Friko. Credit: Alexa Viscius for NME
“I knew that it was happening, but I had no idea how to get involved in the DIY scene,” Minzenberger recalls. “A friend who was plugged in helped us meet people and play shows. After that, we played Schubas or the Empty Bottle – that was one of the first venues that my old band used to play on a consistent basis; they had evenings that the interns could book.”
As they logged more live reps, Friko gradually uncovered the unusual architecture of ‘Where We’ve Been, Where We Go From Here’. A handful of short-form releases had made it plain they were yet to make a recorded statement that reflected the ragged scope of their shows, tamping down the all-in-it-together potential in the songs in the process. That began to eat away at them as they worked on a follow-up to 2022’s ‘Whenever Forever’, an EP that was neat and tidy but only told part of the story. “That was done over such a long period of time,” Minzenberger says. “It was a lot of piecing things together. It has more of that rounded, produced sound.”
“Our next album is going to be big in scope” – Niko Kapetan
Scott Tallarida, who produced ‘Where We’ve Been, Where We Go From Here’, had also noticed that the music they were recording here and there at his studio was being overtaken by newer songs that were more obviously plugged into the kinetic energy the group were capable of producing once the house lights went down. He decided to say something. “Scott was like, ‘You guys are super impactful as a live unit, let’s get that on tape,’” Kapetan says.
With hindsight, the decision to foreground this aspect of Friko’s personality is the cornerstone of everything that followed. The LP was tracked in the room and later overdubbed, giving the riffy ‘Get Numb to It!’ immediacy while also creating the sense that you could get up and walk around in the lilting ‘Statues’. Having course-corrected when they could have rolled on and made another pretty good EP, they instead ended up with a handmade symphony – an ambitious textural work that suggests, maybe, you could do this too. “A lot of it was not knowing what we were doing,” Kapetan deadpans.
Credit: Alexa Viscius for NME
In November, Friko put out a deluxe edition of ‘Where We’ve Been, Where We Go From Here’. At its heart was a live take of ‘Where We’ve Been’ from their Chicago record release show at the Metro that captures the spiralling thrill of their rise in amber. As Kapetan brings the song to life, he barely has time to open his mouth before the audience breaks into cheers and applause, hanging off each syllable. He might not think so, but it’s obvious that the potential for this sort of reaction was baked into the original recording, creating a feedback loop.
Right after Christmas, the band headlined Thalia Hall, a beautiful, 133-year-old theatre in Chicago that holds in the ballpark of a thousand people, and it felt like a natural next step in this process. From Schubas to the Metro and now Thalia Hall, the city and its venues are characters in their story. They were shaped between these walls, with the effort they’d put in at house shows viscerally fed back to them as they climbed each rung. “This is home, this is where we came up as a band, where we came up with people,” Minzenberger says.
“It’s like every Chicago show is our next big show,” Kapetan continues. “I hope we can do one every six months forever. We use them like a gauge of where we need to be to make sure we’re not stagnant musically. I’ve been able to go to a couple DIY shows recently, too, and it’s been nice to see people. I’ve felt a little disconnected.”
Credit: Alexa Viscius for NME
That’s inevitable, given the way Friko’s profile has risen. They’re now in a position to head out on their first US headline tour, which kicks off at the end of February, and follows 2024 support runs with the likes of Water From Your Eyes and Royel Otis and trips across Europe, China and Japan. An organic groundswell of love for their record online in the latter country led to a rapturous reception at the storied Fuji Rock Festival, a remarkable feat for a band so young.
It was all very unexpected, but again, it makes sense. When you weave the desire to communicate throughout your music, things like this can happen. “There was an incredible moment in Tokyo when fans were singing along to ‘Get Numb To It!’,” Kapetan says. “But Shenzhen might have been the craziest – just being in China, where we never thought we’d play. No one from our label has played there. It always means more when it happens in a natural way. The only place that we’ve played to crowds that big before was Chicago.”
Back at Thalia Hall, Friko opened with a new song and sprinkled them throughout their set, along with a cover of Tears For Fears’ ‘Head Over Heels’ that nodded to a recent preoccupation with the pop-rock greats’ ‘Songs From The Big Chair’ record. Kapetan has been studying its ebb and flow as the band zero in on how to make something that sounds huge while keeping the alchemy of their performances intact. “You can make an album in a certain way and the next one can be ‘Nebraska’,” he says. “But I think ours is going to be big in scope.”
Friko’s ‘Where We’ve Been, Where We Go From Here’ is out now via ATO Records.
Listen to Friko’s exclusive playlist to accompany The Cover below on Spotify or on Apple Music here.
Words: Huw Baines
Photography: Alexa Viscius
Hair and Makeup: Énez Beauty
Label: ATO Records
The post Friko are learning how to bring people together: “The songs live night by night” appeared first on NME.
