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Marky Edison

Marky Edison

Frog Return With 1000 Variations on the Same Song

 

Acclaimed cult NY duo Frog return with their sixth album, 1000 Variations on the Same Song on February 14. The album is preceded by three new singles and will be accompanied by a North American tour. Following the critical and commercial success of 2023's ‘Grog,’ cult New York Indie duo Frog are set to return with their sixth album, 1000 Variations on the Same Song, on February 14.

An eclectic, emotional, and lyrically vivid collection, these songs see Daniel Bateman refer to My Chemical Romance, Gucci, Stillwell construction supplies, fatherhood, and the 6 train (“I was listening to a lot of Mozart, Kodak Black, and Prince, but it doesn't really sound like any of those.”).

Musically, songs like ‘Top Of The Pops Var. I’ and ‘Doomscrolling Var. II’ touch on the agitated Indie Rock that defined their earlier work, while the alt-country of ‘Count Bateman’ and ‘Grog’ can be heard on ‘Where U From Var. III’ and ‘Arthur McBride Var. X.’ Elsewhere, material like ‘Just Use Your Hips Var. VI’ and December’s ‘Did Santa Come Var. IX’ single introduce a smokey lounge sound to Frog’s sound, but as Bateman explains it, these are all just variations on the same song: “1000 Variations on the Same Song is a theme and variations—there are times in your life as a songwriter where you'll start a bunch of stuff that all sounds alike, which can be a problem, something that you want to excise from yourself. This time I decided to embrace it and take it as far as it could go.”

Since Frog returned from hiatus in 2023 with the addition of Daniel’s brother Steve Bateman on drums, they’ve received significant critical acclaim and enjoyed sold-out shows in the Tri-state area. These 2025 dates will see the band joined by Frog co-founder Tom White on bass and will take them to cities like Los Angeles, Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, Boise (Treefort Music Fest), and more for first-time-ever shows.

Tour Dates:

8 MARCH - Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, US

22 MARCH - The Echo, Los Angeles, CA, US

23 MARCH - Bottom of the Hill, San Francisco, CA, US

25 MARCH - The Black Lodge, Seattle, WA, US

26 MARCH - The Fox Cabaret Projection Room, Vancouver, BC, Canada

27 MARCH - Mississippi Studios, Portland, OR, US

28 MARCH - Treefort Music Fest, Boise, ID, US

3 APRIL - Bowery Ballroom, New York City, NY, US

11 APRIL - Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, US

Avery Friedman Announces New Thing

 

Brooklyn-based artist Avery Friedman has announced her debut album, New Thing, for release via Audio Antihero on April 18. The album features James Chrisman (Sister.) and Felix Walworth (Florist / Told Slant), and the pre-order launches today.

Friedman had always felt that songwriting was just something that other people did until she was pushed by a transcendent live music experience and a traumatic mugging to seek catharsis through music. Playing her first show in July 2024, she soon shared stages with h. pruz, Dead Gowns, and Sister., and she impressed the latter’s James Chrisman enough that he offered to record her debut album. The result was a sonically deep and layered debut that sees Friedman explore her trauma and queerness with a raw open-heartedness inspired by artists like Adrianne Lenker, Squirrel Flower, and Babehoven.

The lead single, ‘Flowers Fell’, is an ode to transitional stages that uses the changing seasons to demonstrate the growth Friedman has experienced by finally immersing herself in her art. The song’s tense guitar bursts offer an illustration of resistance before a starry-eyed chorus blooms, and Friedman sings, “The flowers fell off when I was asleep / But that’s okay, ‘cause now it’s all green,” as she finds acceptance and resilience in the face of change.

“The opening melody for ‘Flowers Fell’ came to me on a headphone-less walk home one night down Greene Avenue in Brooklyn. I had noticed that the flowers that once lined the branches had been replaced by leaves -- seemingly in the blink of an eye. I was briefly disappointed until I considered that the petals had made way for something more sustainable – and equally full of life.  The song became a meditation on the concept of place – how things of our surroundings like ‘sidewalks,’ and ‘balconies’ and ‘trees,’ can act as fixed backdrops upon which we measure our personal evolutions (and the evolutions of our relationships) across the span of many seasons.” – Avery Friedman

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