I’ve been listening to Avery Friedman’s debut New Thing a lot ahead of its release tomorrow (April 18). The songs have a comforting, broken-in, indie-folk sound that grew on me until it felt like something I’d known for a long time. It’s a warm and nostalgic collection of songs about new love, growth and anxiety. New Thing is a strong debut from the Ohio-born, New York-based singer songwriter. Equally compelling is the story behind it.
Only by chance did Friedman wind up being a musician at all. She learned to play the guitar while recovering from an ACL tear playing soccer in high school. She stopped lessons when her teacher tried to make her sing. She didn’t start writing her own songs until 2023, well into her 20s.
That late start might be part of what makes this record sound so mature. New Thing feels literary, unhurried and deliberate, showing a confidence that’s rare on a debut. Album opener “Into” gently eases into Friedman’s world, using a languid guitar and clipped spoken word samples to establish the record’s reflective thoughtful themes. It transitions into the title track, which has a surprising origin story.
Friedman was the victim of a knifepoint mugging at knifepoint while walking through Brooklyn. The experience was the catalyst for “New Thing”, but you might not suspect it from the warm melody and arrangement on the song:
She talks about it in this interview with blog fave Emmeline in The Line of Best Fit:
That song’s about anxiety and feeling foreign from yourself, and when you push yourself and are forced to grow, like in perusing music, or finally walking alone at night again, and the beauty that can come from it.
The energy on the record peaks on “Photo Booth”, a keyboard-led pop song about that was the hardest song to get right, per this If It Be Your Will interview:
“…for Photo Booth…we couldn’t crack that song for so long, one day we just decided, let’s pretty much remove my guitar playing entirely, and just fuck around on a synth and see what happens. And then the song came to life.”
The record has an intensely personal feel to it, perhaps never more than in “Finger Painting” – a sparse and intimately-arranged song with lyrics that seem like they’re cribbed from a diary:
Now I’m finger painting
I’m letting myself trace it
And you’re looking up at me now
And you say you wanna taste it
After listening to the record a handful of times, I became a believer late one night while staying in a hotel for work, headphones on, energy fading. New Thing grabbed me with its quiet strength, like finding an old journal that made me feel less alone. It’s a fantastic debut effort.
Avery will be releasing New Thing on LP later this year, and hopefully she’ll have a tour to support the record as well. The record release show is on May 15 at Union Pool in New York.
