Friko Return to Bay Area Supporting one of 2024’s Best Albums

Photo Credit: Pooneh Ghana
Chicago outfit touring behind landmark debut album, “Where We’ve Been, Where We Go From Here".

When you’re listening to the music of Friko, Niko Kapetan wants to make sure you’re really listening.

On the Chicago indie rock band’s glorious debut album, this year’s “Where We've Been, Where We Go from Here,” it’s impossible to get comfortable. Austere piano ballads are followed by breakneck post-punk thrashers. Kitchen-sink indie rock anthems sit side-by-side with humble guitar numbers and multi-suite baroque chamber pop epics give way to crashing, blown-out shoegaze pieces.

That discordant, invigorating environment is all by design, according to Kapetan, the band’s guitarist, vocalist and co-founding member alongside drummer Bailey Minzenberger.

“The last thing I ever want to make is music that could just play in the background,” said Kapetan. “When I show people our music and that’s their reaction, I want to literally die. Maybe we’ll make a movie soundtrack of some ambient stuff someday, but for now, we want to go against that feeling. We hope you’re paying attention when you listen to our album.”

On Thursday and Friday, Friko will surely be grabbing the attention of listeners when they perform at The Fillmore and Fox Theater in Oakland, respectively. They’ll be opening those shows for Australian rockers Royel Otis.

The performances are the latest part of a non-stop touring schedule for Friko, which has earned rave reviews for “Where We’ve Been, Where We Go From Here.” A deeply ambitious album that’s rare by today’s standards, the record maps out a band unafraid to explore different genres, moods, tones and approaches. The result is one of the best albums of the year, if not the best.

It's a truly dizzying display of the band’s talents—one that shows an endlessly inventive approach to sonic structures while tracing a lyrical narrative that grapples with regret, memory and the ephemeral nature of passing time. Each song feels singular, yet part of a bold, cohesive mission statement.

“Crimson to Chrome” is a spiky, cascading punk rock testimonial, full of starts and stops and punctuated by Kapetan’s declaration that “We're either too old, too bold or stupid to move/I guess we’re caught on the wrong side of the shoe again.” “Crashing Through” matches that song’s dynamism, with its army of guitars and moments of explosive energy, powered in large part by Minzenberger’s insistent percussion work. 

“Chemical” quickly transforms from a gospel rendition of “Ave Maria” into a tortured, maniacal race against the clock—a frantic dash powered by spiky guitars and Kapetan’s repeated screaming of “Chemical! Chemical!” “Get Numb To It” captures Kapetan at his most desperate, again returning to the thematic motif of time’s endless march, punctuated by the desultory startlement that “It doesn't get better/It just gets twice as bad because you let it.” Kapetan manages to transform that sentiment, however, by viewing isolation and depression as emotions that can ultimately be bonding, exemplified by him evoking the album title: “Where we've been, where we go from here/Take your weight and throw your arms around me.”

“This album was definitely written from a dark place,” said Kapetan. “But if there was a throughline that we wanted to maintain in the album, it was about trying to find joy in those dark places.”

It’s a highly attuned album, emotionally. While Kapetan screams and thrashes on the record’s loud set pieces, he’s equally ruminative and reflective on the release’s most subdued numbers. “For Ella” is a gorgeous lament, just Kapetan and a piano, and his painful retellings of a love lost. “Until I’m With You Again” is another stark composition—a broken heart’s autobiographical tale, and “Cardinal” closes out the album on the most introspective note possible, with Kapetan’s cooing falsetto matched by melancholy string sections. 

The highpoint of the album comes at the very beginning, with the opening track “Where We’ve Been.” Containing an array of distinct movements within a single track, the song serves as a manifesto for the rest of the record—a slow building, churning document that foresees the emotional ebbs and flows of what’s to come while ending in a glorious gang vocal sing along. The song has already reached legendary status—Paste Magazine listed it as the top track of 2024 in its mid-year review.

“That song had this kind of magical feeling from the beginning,” said Kapetan. “It was one of those tracks where everything basically came together in 45 minutes. You have certain songs where you labor over them for hours and hours and nothing comes up, and then you have some where it just feels supernatural. We recorded it once and it was that take on the record. It was just this amazing, special feeling.”

“Where We’ve Been, Where We Go From Here,” is almost perfectly balanced between soft and loud, defiant and accepting, angry and peaceful. As such, it requires that active listening that Kapetan said is a major emphasis of the band.

Additionally, it evokes all the great, ridiculously grand indie rock albums of the early Aughts—everything from Bright Eyes’ “Lifted, Or The Story is In the Soil, Keep Your Ear to the Ground” to …And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead’s “Source Tags and Codes.” With its heart-on-sleeve sentiment, however, its most clear predecessor is Arcade Fire’s landmark 2004 record, “Funeral.”

“We really wanted to show our aspirations with this album—for it to almost be overwhelming,” said Kapetan. “Growing up, indie rock was just so exciting for us, and we wanted to replicate that feeling. But we also love songwriters and playing just quiet acoustic guitar songs. For this first record, we wanted to dive into every realm of possibility, to make it open enough where we could do anything on the next album, and it wouldn’t be a total surprise.”

Kapetan said the band is already plotting out new material for its sophomore album. At this point, the only thing that would be surprising about that effort is if it’s not another generous, daring and vibrant work of art. 

Show Details:
Friko with Royel Otis
Where: The Fillmore and the Fox Theater
When: 8 p.m., Thursday, October 17 at the Fillmore and 8 p.m., Friday, October 18 at the Fox.
Tickets: $50.60 at the Fox Theater, available here. $42.75 at the Fillmore, available here.