Philadelphia band Friendship have released a new single called ‘Alive Twice’. It’s lifted from their forthcoming album Love The Stranger, their first for Merge Records, which has already been previewed with the songs ‘Ugly Little Victory’ and ‘Hank’. Take a listen below.
The band’s Dan Wriggins said in a statement about ‘Alive Twice’:
The poet Linda Gregg dedicated her book of poetry Too Bright to See to her lover, Jack Gilbert, with an all-caps inscription: ‘IT WAS LIKE BEING ALIVE TWICE.’ The phrase shows up later in her poem ‘The Defeated.’ I wasn’t going to steal it, but I looked it up and found that Gregg had taken the phrase from the Tang Dynasty poet Li Po. I think Eileen Myles talks about it, too.
This one went through a unique process. I recorded the delayed Wurlitzer line and vocals alone, then left the studio. Michael, Peter, and Jon, who hadn’t heard the song before, went in together and improvised over it with piano, Rhodes, and organ. Finally, we dropped some of the Wurlitzer, creating an extremely cool, roomy effect.
The track comes paired with a video shot by Michael Kaplan. “I kept asking Michael if we could work zombies into the video,” Wriggins said. “He said it would cost too much. The Black Angel at Iowa City’s Oakland Cemetery, however, is the site of some pretty creepy legends.
Love The Stranger is slated for release on July 29.