Brooklyn musician Avery Friedman has always been fascinated by transitional spaces, the environments where movement is more important than intent, where the process of discovery is more significant than any specific destination. Her start in sharing the sounds that echoed in her head and her affection for provisional experiences began with a song sung around a campfire in 2023. Encouraged by friends, she began working with James Chrisman and Felix Walworth, as well as Ryan Cox of Club Aqua and Malia DelaCruz of CIAO MALZ, in an attempt to uncover the first contours of her debut album, New Thing.
A series of sonic experiments focused on exploring Friedman’s fears, traumas, and queerness, New Thing uses indie rock as a springboard from which to further delve into its intimate revelations and more universal sentiments. Channeling the casual devastation of Frankie Cosmos, Adrienne Lenker, and Squirrel Flower, she crafts a world of organic epiphanies and musical improvisations. The album works within a gauzy anamnesis that underscores the hypnagogic aspects of its emotional awareness and resolution.
“New Thing is a conduit for emotions too frenetic to hold on your own,” explains Friedman. “This record is a collection of the first songs I’ve ever written, after many years of orbiting the music world but denying myself my own musicianship. Many of these tracks were born of anxiety—from my turning to a guitar to externalize (and organize) a sense of chaos that otherwise felt trapped inside me. We recorded the bulk of it with a live band as a means to maintain the raw energy at the center of the record. What results is a time capsule for a year of intense personal expansion in my life—and the layers of warmth, wonder, sensitivity, and sharpness that come with growing.”
Friedman was kind enough to dig into the origins of New Thing for us and offer some insight into how these songs first appeared to her. Read below as she breaks down each track and provides context for the sounds she corralled here, as well as a host of associated memories which fueled their genesis. Her recollections are poignant and perceptive, much like the album itself.
- “Into”
“Into” emerged from the same alternate guitar tuning that the song “New Thing” was written in. They have such opposite energies in a lot of ways (even different time signatures, I learned later via my friend Felix, who drummed on many of these tracks), but I was immediately drawn to the idea of the two songs being connected. We recorded “Into” in one take straight into “New Thing”, as we always play it live. The album was produced and engineered by James Chrisman of Sister., with major contributions from Felix Walworth (Florist / Told Slant), Ryan Cox (Club Aqua), and Malia DelaCruz (CIAO MALZ), and it was a beautifully loose and open experience, one which I’m so grateful can now be shared through this album.
These are the first songs I’ve ever written, and I’d never played in any bands beforehand. I had only started writing songs about a year before we went into James’ studio to record the album, which is to say that I was pretty inexperienced with so many facets of making and recording music. Having a group like this who were willing to try different things and experiment with me was so beneficial, and I think it’s reflected in the album, maybe especially in little moments like “Into”.
- “New Thing”
I wrote “New Thing” in a place of anxiety, after having just ridden the subway alone at night for the first time since being robbed at knifepoint a month or so earlier. I found the guitar part first — driving and full chords — then wrote the lyrics as a means to explore and circle around this newfound anxiety. I was reckoning with the eeriness of something familiar suddenly feeling foreign.
It’s one of the first songs I wrote which I truly loved, and while I was still trying to figure out my sound and direction, it was the demo version of “New Thing” that first really felt right. These are a couple of the reasons why I chose it as the title of my upcoming record.
- “Flowers Fell”
“Flowers Fell” is an ode to transitions and change, and as my debut single. It also represented my transitioning into a songwriter and musician, in a way I would really have to own as my work left my supportive circle and went out further than NYC venues I’d played in.
The song itself was inspired by some gorgeous flowers I’d seen on Greene Avenue in Brooklyn. I was obsessed with them, but I went away on a trip, and when I came back, all the flowers were gone, and had been replaced with green leaves. These seasonal transitions around us can be a reminder of the importance of resilience and finding beauty in change.
- “Photo Booth”
The chorus melody for this song came to me in my sleep. The song is meant to encapsulate the flirty mischief that can accompany a vibrant night out. Specifically, I wrote this song after all of my friends kissed in a photo booth one winter night. It felt like the belated, spin-the-bottle type second puberty that many queer people experience when coming into themselves after their teenage years pass.
Like all my songs, I wrote this with a guitar, but I don’t play any guitar at all on this recording–the instrument is pretty decentered on the whole. We had to scrap and retry this one a few times, ultimately landing on a synth-centric song that feels appropriately more Pop than the other songs on the record.
- “Finger Painting”
“Finger Painting” was born of the anxiety that can accompany a budding, complicated romantic situation. The finger painting metaphor stemmed from me trying to reframe this uncertainty and tension as something light and playful and even creative.
Felix and I recorded this as an off-the-cuff live take at the end of a recording session, with them on the drums and me on the guitar. I ended up loving the instinctual intensity of this take so much that we built the song around it.
- “Somewhere to Go”
So many of my songs emerge from my emotions feeling trapped and needing somewhere to go. I left Prospect Park to write this one fall afternoon, feeling amorphously frustrated. I knew I wanted the guitar riff to be distorted, and I heard the harmonies upon first writing it. Both sonically and lyrically, this song is an exploration of the pressure cooker-like sensation of feeling trapped.
We had a hard time figuring out the percussion of this song, and eventually James, Felix and I abandoned the drum part and instead recorded a trash can opening and closing and our feet walking in place as a percussive part.
- “Biking Standing”
I wrote this song after a night bike ride home from a Country music show. I was reminded of the magic of the simple C to G chord progression and went in with that intention when writing.
The chorus speaks to my struggle with insomnia and trying to maintain a certain lightness around my sleeplessness. I think this is the most leisurely song on the record, but the haunting synth, lead guitars, and chorus group vocals reflect its nighttime roots.
- “Nervous”
This song is a bit meta, as it stemmed from a conversation I had with my ex-girlfriend about my fear of performing. Along the way, it also became a song about the nerves that can accompany the start of falling in love.
In a way it’s funny that it’s the album’s closer since this was actually the first song of mine that I ever performed for others. I was at a campfire after a Sister. and Florist show, and everyone was passing the guitar around to share what they’d been working on. I remember feeling like I really didn’t want it to reach me, and I was shaking with nerves, but I took that first step and played for the group. That campfire performance is how James first heard my work and what led him to offer to produce this record that you’re now listening to. You never know what moments will become meaningful.
New Thing is out now on Audio Antihero. You can order the album here. Follow Avery Friedman on Facebook, X, and Instagram.
