Avery Friedman - New Things

Avery Friedman scatters inner chaos like a meteorite tumbling across the midnight sky. Her debut album, New Things, finds the singer-songwriter pulling her disarray apart to better understand herself and the world in which she inhabits. Dark, moody guitars lace the arrangements together, as her vocals hauntingly move as orbs flying through the air. When the dust settles, answers to life and identity reveal themselves through walls of static and the tremble in her voice. “Don’t you worry about me / I can sleep in my dreams,” she heaves a delicate sigh within “Biking Standing,” a crucial lynchpin to the album, both in tone and performance.

New Things ebbs and flows over vibrating sonic plates. As her first batch of songs she’s ever written, beginning in 2023, it’s quite clear we have an artist dabbling in various styles but keeping those varied strings tangled together for a cohesive, instinctual set. As far as debuts go, it’s an impressive first outing that hints at career-spanning brilliance. A wild energy courses through eight songs, each linked together with common emotional flourishes–the growing pains that everyone must endure as the calendar flips to a new year.

“Finger Painting” sparkles beneath the warmth of shiny instruments–courtesy of a handful of Brooklyn’s brightest, James Chrisman (Sister), drummer Felix Walworth (Told Slant / Florist), Ryan Cox of Club Aqua, and Malia DelaCruz of CIAO MALZ). What Friedman conjures is a seductive and introspective comment on love in its early stages. The unknown is as enticing as the gentle, familiar embrace of a lover. The song absorbs into the eardrums, as does the follow-up “Somewhere to Go” with its frenetic, yet cool, splash of cosmic dust.

The way Friedman has built the record, see-sawing from “Flowers Fell” into the centripetal “Photo Booth” before fading into the album’s second half, deserves its own praise. Each step feels as vital to Friedman’s story as the last, but comes together to create a masterful snapshot of her life. The last year, especially, has been monumental to her personal and professional evolution. Eight songs make it impossible to fathom that Friedman is a new artist. She speaks from such a deep, resonant place that transcends the here and now.

New Things arrives as a stack of Polaroids, a cluster of memories and ideas that stick to the brain like pins to a corkboard. Avery Friedman lets the songs rise and fall, as she bares her soul in crisp detail, and as the listener breathes them in, we slip into those lived-in experiences along with her. It’s hard to imagine where she’ll go next, but what is most evident is that she’s a thrilling, astute artist with plenty more to say.

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