I’m now ashamed to admit that I initially passed on reviewing “Mind Control” by Friends, choosing the parallel opposite sort of track with Mirel Wagner’s “No Death” in my last review. Perhaps the start of May and the promise of the impending summer months to come is what’s shifted my outlook. Or that the sound Friends produces is everything I like in a track: infectious, interesting, and downright sassy.
Friends seem to be on everyone’s list of bands to watch in 2012. “Mind Control” will be the first single off of the band’s new album Manifest!, set to be release June 5 on Fat Possum Records. Tracks were recorded between last summer and this spring with engineer Daniel Schlett at Strange Weather studio in Brooklyn, the band’s home base. Currently on a nearly sold-out nationwide and European tour, I’ll readily admit how excited I am to grab tickets when they finally reach my town.
In “Mind Control,” Friends create a beat that is hypnotic and admittedly hard to resist; I have heard my share of indie-pop bands borrow a beat or two from the days of disco, but never heard these combined with bongo solos, group chants, and super bass in such a seamless and clever way. It’s definitely music for the moment, forcing you to let the groove take you along for its ride. One minute I’m compelled to get up, be productive (hell, maybe even clean my apartment for once), until I am finally a slave to reckless abandon, letting the sexy-afro-charged rhythm carry me up and out onto the street. This is the sort of track I want to play before letting the night take me to its own magical places; it’s the stuff I want the summer of 2012 to be made of, exuding that reassuring feeling that the good times are going to keep on comin
The track’s glory lies not only in its musical complexity, but its underlying wit. Lyrically, I love the band’s ability to play on their own aesthetic. While the band is foraging the sentiments I just described, it is simultaneously poking a bit of fun at its own “indie” image and our expectations of it:
I don’t want to rule or be ruled, I just want the right to be cool
However I chose to do what I do, wherever I choose to be or with whom
Hey, I don’t need your money, I can grown my own food
I don’t need your beauty standard, I can be my own dude
Ultimately, Friends are not only funky but have an uncanny ability to turn every show they play into a DIY dance party. Here’s hoping that this track is the start of a summer conducted in similar fashion.