Album Notes

You have the new Friends of Lizzy EP in your hands. You unwrap it and note the deep painted blues and starry background of the cover. You play it and the music is a perfect fit - lush, full, with a melodic introspective sensibility. The songs sidestep formula with a natural ease. Strings and pianos seamlessly turn into crashing guitars wrapped around the most solid vocal melodies this side of Superdrag. This band isn't afraid to let buoyant verses dissolve into somber choruses, or vice versa - wherever melody leads, they follow.

Clay Fain's softly rounded voice lends the songs an innocence, even when singing "If you touch her, I will touch you - I will break you" on You'd Better Start Running. The counter-melodies and subtle textures that sit inches below the vocals belong to lead guitarist Brooks Rice. Drummer Drew Chandler and bassist Adam Luikart add an unusually punchy and confident swagger to the already dynamic songs.

At the club that night, it's almost as if you're seeing a different band: the soft, rich tones of the EP are stripped down and given a manic energy. Sweat and wood shards fly as Chandler bruises his kit. The stage shudders as Luikart careens off the floor, the walls, and his bandmates, pausing only to lend perfect vocal harmonies with Fain and Rice. The innocence and texture from the EP are intact, but fight a constant battle with the rock flowing from every pore of the band in front of you. That's when you realize that the EP in your hands is only the tip of the iceberg that is friends of lizzy.