Search - Andy Friedman :: Weary Things

Weary Things
Andy Friedman
Weary Things
Genres: Country, Alternative Rock, Folk, Pop, Rock
 
  •  Track Listings (11) - Disc #1

"Friedman is writing some unforgettable songs." (NoDepression.com) — "What [Friedman] sees through his windshield isn't Greil Marcus's Old Weird America, but the weird new America where the pastoral is no longer pure." (Dav...  more »

     
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CD Details

All Artists: Andy Friedman
Title: Weary Things
Members Wishing: 0
Total Copies: 0
Label: City Salvage / Kindred Rhythm
Original Release Date: 1/1/2009
Re-Release Date: 1/27/2009
Genres: Country, Alternative Rock, Folk, Pop, Rock
Styles: Americana, Singer-Songwriters, Roots Rock
Number of Discs: 1
SwapaCD Credits: 1
UPC: 188666000333

Synopsis

Album Description
"Friedman is writing some unforgettable songs." (NoDepression.com)
"What [Friedman] sees through his windshield isn't Greil Marcus's Old Weird America, but the weird new America where the pastoral is no longer pure." (David Gates, Newsweek).

Andy Friedman's second studio album, Weary Things (City Salvage / Kindred Rhythm), is the first definitive statement in the flourishing Brooklyn Country scene. It is also the first recorded with his band The Other Failures, a colorful and versatile outfit, equally capable of raucous roadhouse stomps and yearning tears-in-your-beer balladry. Throughout the record, Friedman reveals a portrayal of himself as weary artist, poet, observer, traveler, and family man - varnished with a glaze of optimism.

From the album's bittersweet opener, "I Miss Being Broken, Lowdown, and Alone," to the rollicking rockabilly "Road Trippin'," to the anthemic title cut, to the ferocious closer, "The Friedman Holler," Andy exhibits all of the reasons why this "hot live act" (NPR) has garnered such abundant worldwide praise and a growing following.

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CD Reviews

Folk, country, blues and recitations from the wilds of Brook
hyperbolium | Earth, USA | 01/27/2009
(4 out of 5 stars)

"The mean streets of Brooklyn, NY are host to a thriving collection of hootenannies, hoedowns, jamborees, and scattershot oprys, jugfests and birthday bashes that must leave Manhattan city folk jealous of their outerborough cousins. Third-generation Brooklynite Andy Friedman found his way to the scene by drawing ever-widening musical circles around a background in visual arts. He started with recitations of spoken word lyrics placed alongside his paintings and drawings, added layers of improvisational musical accompaniment at his live shows, and slowly transformed his work with more traditional arrangements that span folk, country rock, twangy blues and studio touches. You can still hear the self-guided evolution in singing that reveals Friedman's narrative voice.



The title of this sophomore album, Weary Things, highlights the physical lethargy in Friedman's singing, as well as the mental wear of yearning for feelings and times that have aged out of a grown-up's life. He's tired, but it's often a good kind of tired: the tired born of life experience and coping with the curveballs thrown by the world. Friedman gazes longingly at the irresponsibility of youth and the grab-bag freedoms of a cross-country trip. He finds independence in touring but is subsumed by the road's isolation from family, declaring the former in the electric blues shuffle "Road Trippin'" and giving in to the latter on the acoustic apologia "Road Trippin' Daddy." Cleverly, the lyrics of both songs are the same but the arrangement and vocal tone rewrite their meaning.



Friedman's self-discovery offers a matured version of Jonathan Richman's childlike wonder. He's humorous without being jokey, arch without being ironic, like writer Nicholson Baker without the OCD. Well, mostly without the OCD, as the encyclopedic eulogy for his home base, Freddy's Backroom, stretches to eight-minutes of barstool detail. He writes philosophically of his background as a painter, and like many of the Brooklyn hillbillies, paints against the backdrop of their urban milieu. He's sufficiently self-assured to pierce his own hipness with the overly dramatic aside, "Hello young loners, wherever you are," and closes the album a rousing take of "The Friedman Holler" recorded live in Chicago. Friedman's sentimental, tough, sloppy, resilient, irascible, capricious and pragmatic, but most of all he's honest, and that honesty is the fuel of country songwriting whether it's ignited in the hills of Appalachians or the heights of Brooklyn. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]"
Weary Things =Great Listening
B. Roberts | Pennsylvania | 02/05/2009
(5 out of 5 stars)

"I truly love this new CD by Andy Friedman and the Other Failures. It was hard for me to imagine anything as spectacular and moving as their first CD. "Taken Man" and yet, they've done it!

Listen not only to the music, but pay attention to the poetry of the lyrics. Friedman clearly has wonderful stories to share and personal emotions to offer up. The music is that perfect support for what is being expressed in each song. It's an experience worth your time. Buy it now, listen to it at once and enjoy it time and again. (You'll get more out of it with each listen.)"