Friedberg on embracing more cowbell on debut LP Hardcore Workout Queen
Friedberg’s debut album has been a long time coming. Frontwoman Anna F. led a solo career in a different time, with a different sound – but after a roadtrip across California in 2017, she came back with a set of songs that called for a change in approach. “I had my solo career before that, but I didn’t really want to proceed with that because the new sound of these songs was so different. I thought, I want to have a band. I don’t want to be just ‘Anna F.’”
READ MORE: Wild Rivers on embracing mistakes, human connection and real amps to make the recording process fun again
Upon her return she quickly assembled the lineup for Friedberg (named for Anna’s hometown in Austria) in London, and as she explains, the songs had clearly found their place. “We went to rehearsal, tried the new songs, and it sounded amazing. So the next thing was, just ‘let’s try a gig, just try it out, play a gig in some shitty pub’… well, it turned out it wasn’t actually shitty, it was nice in the end.”
Either way, the project was vindicated by the audience response. “We played Go Wild as the first song, and at the end of it, people were jumping up from the tables and cheering for us – I remember feeling at the time like, ‘oh my god, maybe something’s happening here’”, says Anna.
Image: Lewis Vorn
Following some singles, the band’s debut EP Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah arrived in 2021. But they’re now gearing up to release their first full-length, Hardcore Workout Queen. The album is an awesome collection of angular indie-rock, with propulsive, dancey drumbeats underpinning chaotic, sharp guitar lines. And that guitar-forward approach, for Anna, is something enabled by forming a band rather than keeping Friedberg as a solo project: “The songs just developed in a different direction. I still had a band with me before, two guitarists and so on – but it was a different kind of sound. It wasn’t as guitar-focused – the songs moved into that guitar-heavy direction.”
As for how to pin Friedberg down by genre? Well, Friedberg’s guitarist – and as we’ll discuss later, Anna’s ‘gear curator’ – Emily Linden explains: “It’s hard to say it’s one thing. On some of the new tunes, there’s quite a lot of synth stuff, but then live we have the setup of two guitars, bass, drums and many, many cowbells. And the live performance is different to the recordings, too – we extend things, we put in percussion breaks, and instrumental breaks too.”
“Also live it’s a lot heavier too, at least that’s what many people say after they see us live,” Anna adds. She laughs as she then recalls the last attempt at pinning Friedberg down to a set of standard genre markers: “The latest was ‘alternative rock with slices of dance punk’ – that was our latest attempt!”
Gear Curation
When it comes to crafting the band’s live sound, the two guitarists take very different approaches. Emily takes the lead on the more expansive, synthy side of things. “When I first started playing live with Friedberg, the approach was that we didn’t want all the synths to come from a track. ‘If we can get it on guitar, then we get it on guitar’ – so I’ve got a good few pedals to make lots of different sounds, sometimes to replicate synths, sometimes to just add noise and so on. So I’ve got a Strymon BigSky that I use for lots of different reverbs. I’ve also got an EHX Mono Synth – we’ve used that on the record before, and then there’s a TC Electronic one with chorus and flanger in one, the SCF. So I play around with those for different synth sounds.
“And then for the guitar sounds, I’ve got a Cali76 compressor, and also a Fulltone OCD. I want to get rid of my OCD, really. Only because with the new songs we’ve dialled down the amount of distorted, crunchy rock tones. So I want to get something to replace that! I’m using the Spark booster set quite clean really to just give it a low-key crunch.”
Anna adds that she also has an OCD (“and I hate it too!”), but explains that her approach is a lot more straightforward, and basically consists of that OCD as an always-on drive. “I have so much to do on stage – I have to play a million cowbells at the same time, I’m singing, playing guitar and swapping between things. So I basically just have one setting that I use throughout the set.”
Image: Lewis Vorn
When it comes to amps, Emily is also clear on her preference for the analogue approach. “Because we play a lot of gigs in Germany and Austria and we’ve been to America a few times, I was always thinking that it’d be so much easier to fly with a Kemper – everything’s all set. But I just missed the analogue thing. You can become limitless with a digital board. The realms of possibility are massive. But… when you bring it down and you are limited, and trying to get as much as you can from what you’ve got – I love doing that.”
Anna concurs. “Yes, it’s always better, that limiting – there are so many options in these current times. Like everything – 10 oat milks and so on,” she adds, and laughs – “but there’s definitely more excitement, more potential for something unexpected to happen with the analogue stuff.”
Emily’s passion for her gear has clearly let her slide into a natural role within Friedberg, as Anna explains: “Emily is basically my pedal curator , because I’m not a geek about it at all – I’ve got a lot of other things on stage, so I’m always happy to hand that over to her!”
As for actual guitars, Anna has a similarly straightforward approach, in that she’s found her number one guitar and has stuck with it since. “I have a Duesenberg Starplayer – and I like the sound of it. I’ve had it for 10 years now, back in another time when I had another curator! I just asked, what guitar should I get? And he said this one, so I did – and I love the sound of it. Whenever I have to use another guitar live, if I break a string or something, the guitar lines don’t sound as good.”
Image: Lewis Vorn
The Cowbell Extended Universe
One genre descriptor that Hardcore Workout Queen does bring to mind is krautrock – there’s a driving, percussion-focused sound accentuated by spiky guitar lines, and even within the shorter format of the band’s recorded songs, there’s even some noisy, angular jamming happening.
“I mean, I love it. I mean I love Neu!, and I love Can, and I love Beak,” Anna says. “In Hardcore Workout Queen, the song – it’s kind of a krautrock beat, but maybe there’s one kick drum missing from that typical motorik pattern. But there’s still kind of that drum machine vibe. And I love that thing where it just stays on the same thing, and develops and develops, and then there’s some psychedelic thing that happens or one little element that’s added and it’s amazing – a similar moment to when a cowbell comes in!”
The humble cowbell has become somewhat of a flagship for Friedberg, appearing on merch, getting tattooed by fans, and generally driving the music into a fun, dancey place. And it all started exactly where you’d think, when you hear that a band has embraced “more cowbell.”
“Someone showed me the Saturday Night Live sketch,” Anna says, “that was literally the first thing that hooked me in. Shortly after that, I saw ESG live at the Jazz Cafe, and that was when I just fell in love completely. Just because of the way they used them – whenever a cowbell or a woodblock would appear it just made me so happy. It was just perfection. To any track it adds something that just makes me happy.”
From there, things started to snowball. Emily notes that while she may be the guitar curator, Anna remains the cowbell curator. “We only started off with one cowbell, which is actually still with us,” says Anna, “and now we need a whole flight case just for cowbells! At our last rehearsal, we were extending some songs, and I was thinking, is this too much cowbell? But, then it’s like… can there ever be too much cowbell?”
“If there can be,” Emily muses, “it’s this band that will find out.”
Hardcore Workout Queen is out now
The post Friedberg on embracing more cowbell on debut LP Hardcore Workout Queen appeared first on Guitar.com | All Things Guitar.
Source: www.guitar-bass.net
