ALBUM REVIEW: Fickle Friends – ‘Fickle Friends’

A new Fickle Friends album forces you to remember where they started, by its very nature. The reason is that the distance between then and now doesn’t appear to be closing, back when they were auspicious upstarts in the indie / synthpop wave of the 2010s, before dropping hard and getting left behind. Chalk that up to 2022’s Are We Gonna Be Alright? and its multitude of convergent wrongdoings—a follow-up that came four years after the well-liked debut You Are Someone Else, dumped in the January doldrums with significantly dwindled vigour. Though not strictly terrible, it felt like a hard-and-fast stop on growth, especially counterproductive when that would be the historical calling card of this whole scene. For context, The 1975 are now household names; Pale Waves have undergone multiple evolutionary leaps forward; even MUNA and The Aces, though more niche, have had plenty of flowers come their way.

Fickle Friends, by comparison, have progressed insofar as they haven’t shrunk into nothingness yet. For their self-titled third album, they’ve gone down the route of self-producing and self-releasing, and end up hitting every stereotypical limit associated with both. From a band with pieces of ear-candy like Swim and Lovesick to their name, it’s so disheartening to see them end up like this—all weak, diluted, watered-down flavour that even the brightest spark of enthusiasm can’t rescue. Next to their ex-contemporaries, Fickle Friends now look borderline amateurish.

It doesn’t take long for that to transpire, either; in fact, it’s from the very first song. Bleach is not a good opener for a self-titled album especially, as it’s the antithesis of everything that Fickle Friends are at their best. The mix is shallow and drained; the percussion is stodgy; the bass, rather than produce any significant groove, only segments a guitar rattle that’s already locked in place. It’s about as false as false starts come, and again, coming from this band, who’ve proven themselves to be leagues better, the aim of the pivot is mystifying. Thankfully, it’s not too prevalent across the album, though Happier and Feral are also both rigid enough to imply more than an unfortunately early misstep.

In the same way that Are We Gonna Be Alright? was let down by Fickle Friends’ grip on their best traits loosening, the self-titled album takes an even more haphazard approach. Of particular note, the care given to Sam Morris’ drums tends to fluctuate wildly. Sometimes, there’s a playful, charismatic shuffle like on Joe; others, there’s a song like Honest, a fragment of an indie-pop snoozer where the percussion actively sounds tired of its own monotony. The overarching issue is how small Fickle Friends appear on this album, and often with no power to speak of. The likes of Swoon and Feral want indie-rock texture, though their critically lifeless, gutless guitars make that more of a pipe dream. Fear, on the other hand, funnels any and all experimentation into itself for an intended swing for the fences, and for a cut this deep into self-titled-era Fickle Friends, you should have an idea of how that goes. Unstructured clouds of synth are here to approximate atmosphere with a pillowy, Taylor Swift-esque vocal, but none of it works. It’s too different from any of this band’s established successes, and too far into the album to feel like a product of natural growth.

At least, even after all that, the grip isn’t totally gone. Pop nous is something that Fickle Friends still have, even if the capacity to show it off is running on fumes. When the stakes are low and the tone is kept slick and snappy, like with Wow and Fantasy, it’s the closest to You Are Someone Else that Fickle Friends will get. It’s even better on Joe, too, as the busier, fuller mix rolls with its own momentum and hits a pretty great pop-rock lode. It’s also among vocalist Natassja Shiner’s best performances on the album, who’s already  the semi-consistent bright spot keeping the album afloat. Here, she’s unfailingly exuberant and charming, delivering the most noteworthy line of “I just need a little reassurance today / Would you love me if I was a worm, okay?” without even a thought of how corny it could be in the wrong hands. It really does seem as though, when Fickle Friends do decide to work, it’s a rather all-or-nothing scenario.

It sure would be nicer, then, to have more of ‘all’ than ‘nothing’. Even in those aformentioned highlights, it’s very telling that Fickle Friends pluck their cues from The 1975’s poppiest, as if fealty is the most they can offer to get back into the inner circle. The truth is, most of the bands they shared that bracket with have moved on, compared to Fickle Friends’ inability to. What they’re doing here is safe in the worst way, as they muddle through ideas that, most of the time, aren’t even that further afield, only to realise that where they started is still their best. That’s the most eye-opening perspective brought about by this—Fickle Friends bore their sweetest fruit in 2018, and have been largely barren of new crops since. If that isn’t textbook benchwarmer material, what is?

For fans of: Pale Waves, The Aces, Orchards

‘Fickle Friends’ by Fickle Friends is released on 7th November on Palmeira Music.

Words by Luke Nuttall