Friko Are Emphatically Getting There

4 hours ago 2

Friko's new album has a train song. It has a bicycle song. It even has a hot air balloon song. When the young Chicago combo said transit was a major theme of new album Something Worth Waiting For, they weren't kidding.

"I feel like if you set out to write an album full of that stuff, it would come out pretty bad," says Niko Kapetan, the group's singer-songwriter and namesake, during a recent video chat with the whole band. "But it came from a very genuine and lived-experience kind of place."

All those songs about vehicular motion might not have been piled up on purpose, but the band had movement on the mind for good reason. Though rooted in Chicago's Hallogallo scene, where they came of age alongside peers like Horsegirl and Lifeguard, these days, Friko are on the go. It's not quite A Hard Day's Night-level pandemonium, but the newly expanded quartet has been living the life of a buzzy indie rock band in the 2020s, touring their asses off and traveling to record with high-profile producers.

Specifically, they holed up in Los Angeles with esteemed veteran John Congleton to make the new LP, which drops later this month on ATO. Friko are still a young band in multiple senses; Kapetan and drummer Bailey Minzenberger were barely out of high school when they formed the band with former bassist Luke Stamos in 2019, and new bassist David Fuller and guitarist Korgan Robb only came on board during the touring for Friko's 2024 debut Where We've Been, Where We Go From Here. Traveling to record with Congleton, a Grammy winner who has worked with seemingly everyone in indie rock, focused and sharpened them.

"Because it was a new location and so much of it was new, I felt like I was soaking up new information constantly," Minzenberger says. "I feel like I can see all of it like a movie in my head."

Congleton pushed the band to move past the discussion phase and try things, and he coached them about how to play off each other and get out of each other's way. Songs that came together in a Chicago practice space, about coming of age in the Windy City, took on new dimensions when transposed to a new location under the influence of an old pro.

"It really did feel like an isolated adventure," Fuller says. "I don't want to call it a side quest because this is obviously a main quest. But being in a completely new environment, it really did kind of give the opportunity to add a different color to the way that I look at the music."

Something Worth Waiting For lives up to its title. The album levels up from Friko's promising debut, ramping up the howl-along catchiness and explosive dynamics as Kapetan wails with the fervor of Y2K-era favorites like Conor Oberst or Thom Yorke. After years of indie rock bands pursuing a more reined-in, streaming-friendly sound or burrowing into cerebral, emotionally guarded post-punk, it feels like part of a pendulum swing toward grand gestures and big feelings, calling back to the no-holds-barred emotional bloodletting of 2000s indie rock — or the even more bombastic scale of '70s arena rock.

"We got together and said, 'All these bands, they're making the tiny little music, we gotta make the huge music!'" Kapetan jokes. "No, but it was just really natural. My dad loved Led Zeppelin and Queen and all the huge classic rock stuff. Then as I got older, because of that, the first indie bands I got into were like the huge indie bands like the Strokes, or, much smaller but kind of that huge sound, like Broken Social Scene."

You can hear all that coursing through the new album. Electric advance track "Choo Choo" is manna for disenchanted Arcade Fire fans, while lead single "Seven Degrees" evokes the Beatles and Bowie at their most anthemic. Songs like opener "Guess" and the late-breaking title track build from quiet tension to all-consuming infernos of distortion, and even a quieter offering like "Certainty" — boasting a string arrangement from blog-era veteran Jherek Bischoff — finds Kapetan's voice passionately swooning like Grizzly Bear's Ed Droste.

"We're a heart-on-our-sleeves kind of bunch," Kapetan explains. When he was developing his songwriting style and figuring out who he wanted to be as an artist, he tried everything, including playing it cool. But ultimately, they love kicking up a gargantuan racket and creating the potential for a transformative communal moment. "I still haven't been to an LCD Soundsystem concert, but that's what I would imagine," he says. "That's what I feel like we all think is our peak, is an LCD Soundsystem concert — all these people, it feels so grand and huge, but it's also very tasteful music. It's not, like, Guns N' Roses."

With an assist from Congleton, a Steve Albini disciple whose own music with the Paper Chase is visceral and raw, Friko made a record fit for that kind of catharsis. But recordings can't capture a dynamism that isn't already there. First, the band had to come up with songs that delivered the kind of ecstatic release they were seeking.

"In rehearsals, we talk about things feeling right in our body to play for ourselves, and following our gut," Robb says. "Sometimes we speak in references, maybe guitar tone referencing a band, but most of the time it's like serving the song and then feeling right in ourselves." Minzenberger adds, "It is pretty interesting sometimes how physical of a thing that can be."

Those seeking that sense of oomph need look no farther than Something Worth Waiting For. The title alludes to constantly striving for something greater and never quite getting there, but this album sure sounds like the work of a band that has arrived — perhaps by train, bicycle, or balloon.