Because I’m a dork, I worked it out: the average length of a song on this whistlestop album is 97 seconds. Ten songs in a quarter of an hour. Which you might think isn’t time for much.
And it isn’t really, but on Friends Rackets make it work by providing a bunch of carefree shots of guitar-driven punkish fun that are pretty difficult to resist. Often revolving around a single rapid-fire riff or earnestly repeated vocal mantra, the songs here feel like they were thrown together and recorded as quickly as possible, giving them an irrepressible propulsive energy that sticks in your mind even if the songs themselves don’t. While this could be a negative, instead it works in the albums favour, as it allows the album to merge together into a single, easily-consumed dose of cavalier rockery.
Remarkably for such an approach, Friends is dud-free, and as my fellow reviewer said of their simultaneously released High Places, gives you the feeling that Rackets could write such songs in their sleep, such is the effortless ease and swagger by which one consistent song after another is delivered throughout. The method of only focusing on an idea long enough to put it out in the world stops anything from being overthought, and results in a refreshingly unpretentious listening experience. Rackets are just here to give us a dose of punchy, honest rock music, and do so with an aplomb and candour that is both endearing and unabashedly entertaining. Simply put, Friends is a blast.
