Artist: Suggested Friends
Title: Cygnets
Format: Digital single
Cat#: Fika075SG1
Release date: 2nd August 2019
Bandcamp | Spotify
We’re delighted to announce the second album from queer DIY punks SUGGESTED FRIENDS is coming out on Fika later this year, with Turtle Taxi set for release on 4th October 2019. .
The band recently announced they will be supporting Camp Cope on 26th September in Nottingham alongside Witching Waves, and will also appear at Nottingham Pop All-Dayer 2019 and Weenfest 2019, and will be playing a special album launch show at The Shacklewell Arms in London on 9th October 2019. Further live dates TBA (see below for listings).
To celebrate the news, the band are streaming lead single ‘Cygnets’ in full today, accompanied by a hometaped video filmed in Harper’s Ferry, Virginia on the band’s recent 2018 US tour dates: https://youtu.be/dRQxXn8T5_I
Commenting on the new single, guitarist and vocalist Faith Taylor said: “This song documents the uneasy process of learning to trust yourself and therefore also trust other people. It refers to ‘digital birds’ because my bird-sound alarm clock mixed in with the sounds of the actual dawn chorus and became a metaphor for discerning which messages and voices to believe. The song was written in ten minutes because I forgot I’d promised to bring some new material to a rehearsal. It ended up being one of our favourites ever!”
Suggested Friends are an indie rock quartet with a firm grounding in queer identity, fusing DIY punk roots with the interweaving guitars of 90s indie and a sometimes tongue-in-cheek take on the performative masculinity of 80s rock. There’s a tenderness to their songwriting, with lyrics reflecting on cultural malaise, trauma recovery and the banal absurdity of everyday life. Personal politics can come with an incisively dry sense of humour too.
Turtle Taxi is their second album and demonstrates just how far they’ve come from the raw, scuzzy sounds of their DIY debut; unrepentant in letting the pop hooks loose. The choruses are big, harmonies frequent, and guitar solos abound—this is a lush, textured leap forward.
Suggested Friends are more confident, acknowledging emotional pain and exploring how this affective space elides with a more expansive sense of injustice in the world.
On ‘Pretty Soon Your Grave Will Be A Landfill’ the earnestness and absurdity of gaslighting politicians is laid bare, through to the futility of naming social ills and not acting on them on ‘At Ease’. The album’s title track, ‘Turtle Taxi’, talks about the relationship between love as a labour and the focusing-in on life as an opportunity for that to flourish in all directions—(‘teach ‘til I die, let this all pass by…’).
The quieter numbers on the record, such as ‘At Ease’ or ‘Blooms’, recall folkier inspiration such as The Weather Station and Hiss Golden Messenger, through to the alt-pop oddness of Nilufer Yanya and Blood Orange. But for parallels as a socially conscious, high-energy and vulnerable punk pop band, think Martha or Charly Bliss—though they’d argue for that perfect sweet spot between Weezer and Abba!
Recorded in rural Norfolk over two separate sessions a year apart, the album was able to flourish into a more collaborative effort—incorporating Faith’s wife Meghan on percussion and Sickroom Studio's Owen on trumpet—plus plenty of time to experiment with overdubs and piano flourishes to up that classic-rock vibe that simmers just under the surface.
Suggested Friends formed in late 2015 following a chance meeting at a gig between Christabel (drums) and Faith (guitar and vocals). They were soon joined by Jack on guitar, who had met Faith through an activist group in London. Mammoth Penguins’ Emma Kupa is the most recent addition on bass, having worked with Faith on a number of projects over the past four years.
The band have previously received a surge of early praise from the blogosphere including GoldFlakePaint, Too Many Blogs, The Grey Estates, For The Rabbits, Get In Her Ears, Loud Women, GigSlutz, and Spectral Nights, alongside early radio support from BBC Wales.
Further live dates TBA.
Turtle Taxi is released 4th October 2019 on Fika Recordings
Suggested Friends live:
26.09.19 - Nottingham - Metronome (w/ Camp Cope)
09.10.19 - London - The Shacklewell Arms (album launch show)
12.10.19 - Nottingham - The Old Cold Store - 2019 Nottingham Pop All-Dayer
25.10.19 - London - DIY Space For London - Weenfest 2019