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Tag: underrated albums

  • Friendship – Caveman Wakes Up (Album Review)

    A modern-day caveman in a world he barely recognizes — the artwork for Friendship’s latest album captures the ache and absurdity of waking up to reality.

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    Waking to a World of Everyday Struggles

    Philadelphia indie outfit Friendship returns with their fifth album, Caveman Wakes Up, a record that peels back the curtains on everyday life’s quiet dramas. Frontman Dan Wriggins sings in an unvarnished baritone that lends gravity to tales of work, faith, and loneliness. The album’s overarching concept evokes a modern caveman awakening to the strange realities of contemporary society – essentially an artful meditation on depression wrapped in wry storytelling and keen social observation. This latest release, their second on Merge Records, finds the band honing their blend of folk-rock intimacy and indie-rock experimentation.

    Social Themes and Storytelling

    The band Friendship, photographed ahead of their 2025 release Caveman Wakes Up. Known for their understated style and lyrical depth, the Philadelphia group continues to blur the line between folk intimacy and indie experimentation.

    Lyrically, Caveman Wakes Up shines a light on the mundane struggles of ordinary people, elevating them into poetic vignettes. Wriggins often chronicles “the common man wrestling with the crush of the mundane” – from dead-end jobs to distant dreams – with a mix of blunt honesty and subtle humor. On “Free Association,” he portrays post-breakup malaise through a mundane routine – even the act of complaining about work – to show how loneliness magnifies the ordinary. “Tree of Heaven” brilliantly encapsulates the isolation of being on life’s margins, describing a scene of standing outside a church listening to the choir’s voices bleed through the walls. It’s a vivid snapshot of feeling spiritually adrift in a community – a theme that resonates across the record’s social commentary. Elsewhere, “Resident Evil” couches an existential dread in domestic absurdity, culminating in the darkly comic question: “who’s that shithead in my living room, playing Resident Evil?” Throughout the album, despair and dry wit sit side by side, blurring “bleak humor with flashes of transcendence, where the sacred and profane blur.” In this way, Friendship confronts social alienation and mental health head-on, suggesting that waking up to reality is equal parts devastating and oddly funny.

    Production and Sonic Landscape

    Musically, Caveman Wakes Up expands Friendship’s alt-country roots into richer, more experimental territory. The production balances grit and grace: the band delivers a murky, poetic expansion of country-rock, rich with texture and experimentation. Indeed, the arrangements are full of character. “Resident Evil,” a standout track, rides on guitars that poke and prod à la Neil Young’s Crazy Horse, periodically erupting into feedback to mirror the song’s anxious mood. In “Tree of Heaven,” a martial drum stomp and an atonal violin line heighten the sense of outsider angst, making the listener feel that Sunday morning coldness of standing alone outside the sanctuary. By contrast, “Love Vape” offers a bass-heavy, mid-tempo bounce, painting the neon-lit tableau of a Philly smoke shop (complete with vivid details from a real smoke shop) over a surprisingly bright melody. These shifts in sound – from shambling guitars and occasional Mellotron swells to moments of almost Motown-like groove – serve the album’s themes by alternating between somber reflection and subtle relief. Wriggins’ voice, rough-hewn yet resonant, sits front and center in the mix, ensuring every line is delivered with an earnest weight that matches the subject matter.

    Highlights and Impressions

    Rather than a collection of singles, Caveman Wakes Up plays like a cohesive journal of working-class angst and hope. Late in the album, “All Over the World” repeats a phone-call refrain (“Hey buddy, where are you at? … I’m all over the world”) with mounting intensity, turning a simple greeting into an existential question, before the closing “Fantasia” ends on a quietly matter-of-fact note – a lover stepping out for another beer amid delicate strings. These final moments reinforce how Caveman Wakes Up finds profound meaning in humble, everyday scenes.

    Verdict

    On Caveman Wakes Up, Friendship stay true to their name – offering a candid, empathetic companion through life’s unglamorous moments. The album is at once grounded and artful, full of small indignities rendered with plaintive grace. Its social themes of alienation, faith, and labor feel timely and relatable, tackled with a clear-eyed poetry that never slips into melodrama. The production underscores these themes, from the emotional weight and casual surrealism in Wriggins’ lyrics to the careful interplay of instruments that add color to even the grayest narratives. If there’s a flaw, it’s that the tone can occasionally meander; some moments can be a rough place to hang out on repeat listens. But even this unevenness contributes to the sense of a genuine lived experience. Ultimately, Caveman Wakes Up stands as a compelling reflection on waking up each day to face a world that can be both black coffee bitter and quietly beautiful. In delivering hard truths with melodic finesse, Friendship have crafted a thoughtful album that invites us to share in the burden and the beauty of simply carrying on.

    Sources: Key data and statements in this article are drawn from Stereogum, Pitchfork, Paste Magazine, BrooklynVegan, and Merge Records. Additional insights were sourced from official press releases, band interviews, and verified album reviews. All assertions are supported by these reliable sources, ensuring a fact-based, well-rounded perspective throughout the article.

  • Real Estate – Days (2011, Domino Recording Co.)

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    Released in 2011 on Domino Recording Co., Days is the sophomore album by New Jersey indie outfit Real Estate. At the time, it was received as a pleasant, sunlit collection of songs. Decent but not exactly groundbreaking. The indie landscape of 2011 was crowded with big statements and bold experiments. Real Estate’s gentle jangle pop stood out more for its understated charm than for any radical innovation. Critics praised the record’s warmth and consistency, though some noted that its comforts felt almost too familiar. The tracks were easy to enjoy, if easy to underrate. In other words, Days fit snugly into its moment as an “okay but not great” release. Enjoyable, modest, and mellow. Yet over time this unassuming album has quietly proven itself to be a slow burn treasure, revealing subtleties that grow ever more rewarding with age.

    Sound and Style: Jangle, Haze, and Suburban Nostalgia

    From the first notes of opener “Easy,” Days envelops the listener in a golden indie haze. The production is clean and unshowy, defined by chiming, jangly guitars and gently reverberating textures. Singer Martin Courtney’s vocals are soft focus. His voice isn’t forceful so much as comforting, blending into the songs like another instrument. This gives the album a wistful, dreamy quality, as if heard through the glow of memory.

    Nostalgia runs deep in Days. Courtney’s lyrics paint vignettes of suburban youth. “All those aimless drives through green aisles,” he recalls on standout track “Green Aisles,” looking back on small-town summer escapades. Images of houses and gardens, streetlights and lazy afternoons populate the album, imbuing it with a longing for simpler times and familiar places. It’s a mood not unlike the one R.E.M. summoned in “Nightswimming,” and Real Estate similarly find meaning in life’s daily mundanities, turning ordinary suburban scenes into something poetic.

    Musically, Real Estate stick to what they love. Melodic, classic indie pop songcraft. Their influences peek through in subtle ways. The band’s signature guitar interplay, courtesy of Courtney and Matt Mondanile, clearly follows in the lineage of earlier jangle pop forefathers. There’s a direct line from the hooks of early R.E.M. and the hypnotic strums of The Feelies to the lilting riffs on Days. Fittingly, Real Estate hail from the same New Jersey suburbs that spawned The Feelies decades before. The album’s breezy, effortless vibe also echoes fellow early 2010s indie acts like Beach Fossils and Wild Nothing, who likewise favored nimble guitars and dreamy textures over bravado.

    The production by Kevin McMahon is polished but intimate. You can hear the interplay of two clean guitars winding around each other, a gently driving rhythm section, and the airy reverb that gives everything a slight soft focus glow. Key tracks illustrate the band’s delicate balancing act. “It’s Real,” with its upbeat tempo and wordless “oooh” chorus hook, is the closest thing to a single and shows Real Estate’s knack for immediate melody. “Out of Tune” and “Municipality” are more low key, riding laconic grooves and shimmering guitar leads that conjure late afternoon light. And closing track “All the Same,” stretching past seven minutes in a looping, meditative jam, reveals a newfound ambition. It’s the band’s first epic, quiet and restrained like the rest of the record.

    Reception and Retrospective

    Upon its release, Days garnered generally favorable reviews, even if it didn’t ignite rapturous hype. Many listeners and critics were charmed by its consistency and pastoral beauty. The album’s best moments—the punchy refrain of “It’s Real,” the gentle sprawl of “Green Aisles,” the chiming nostalgia of “Municipality”—cemented Real Estate as dependable purveyors of mellow indie rock.

    Still, Days was a quiet entry in a year filled with louder, bolder releases. Some contemporary reviews tempered their praise with slight disappointment at the album’s safeness. While admiring the “golden warmth” and memorability of the tunes, some critics admitted that despite their surface loveliness, the songs could feel curiously familiar or uninspiring. In 2011, Days was thus respected as an enjoyable record, even an excellent one in some circles, but not hailed as a game changer.

    Over the years, however, the quiet strengths of Days have steadily elevated its stature. What once seemed like merely a pretty, modest indie album has proven to have lasting resonance. Fans who kept returning to Days found new details to appreciate in its subtle arrangements and moods. Its consistency and singular focus, aspects that initially came off as uniformity, became virtues in the long run. The album’s suburban nostalgia has also aged well. In an era of fast shifting trends, Days evokes something timeless in its reflection on youth and place. Those aimless drives and carefree summers captured on the record carry a universal wistfulness that has only grown more poignant as the band and its listeners have grown older.

    In retrospect, the album’s lack of flash has made it a comforting constant. You could say Days was never meant to be instant fireworks. Instead, it’s the kind of slow burning ember that quietly keeps glowing.

    A Quiet Place in the Indie Canon

    More than a decade later, Real Estate’s Days has earned a quietly revered spot in the indie rock canon. What once felt like a small statement now looms larger as a touchstone for a certain strain of indie music. Numerous bands in the 2010s and 2020s have clearly drawn inspiration from Days’ idyllic jangle and laid back atmosphere. The album’s simplicity is something many have attempted to emulate since its release.

    In hindsight, Days can be seen as a minor classic of modern jangle pop. An album whose influence and appeal snuck up on us quietly. It’s not flashy, but it’s beloved. Even publications have come to regard it in a new light. By its tenth anniversary, Days was being called Real Estate’s defining album. A status earned not by grand ambition or immediate impact, but by steady quality and enduring charm.

    Listening to Days now is to appreciate how well its gentle songs have aged and how comfortingly familiar they remain. It may not shout for attention, but Days has proven its staying power through quiet persistence. In the end, Real Estate’s unassuming second record has become a slow burn favorite. A record that, almost silently, solidified its place as a beloved soundtrack to endless summer afternoons and nostalgic daydreams.