Firefriend

Originally released in 2018 by Portland's Little Cloud Records, this record slipped through the cracks, disappeared into the underground and slowly became one of those records whispered about by people who know exactly where to look. But Sulfur isn't simply a lost psych-rock record being dragged out of the vault because somebody noticed that old copies are expensive. There is something considerably more uncomfortable lurking beneath its surface and eight years after its original release Sulfur is every bit as relevant as it was in 2018. Firefriend have always understood psychedelia as more than a decorative filter to throw over a guitar. They turn up the amplifiers and let the noise do some of the talking. This is psychedelic music with its eyes open. Coming out of São Paulo, Firefriend make music that feels like it has been dragged through the city after midnight with psych rock, shoegaze, noise, darkwave and electronics all feeding into one another until the distinctions start to become meaningless. There are riffs, grooves and melodies, but also a constant sense of pressure, something is happening outside the room, something is burning, and pretending otherwise isn't really an option. The titles don't exactly offer much reassurance. Sulfur is full of little collisions between the cosmic and the catastrophic, outer space and environmental collapse, psychedelic escape and political reality. And that is perhaps where Firefriend's music really hits. There is a temptation with psychedelic music to imagine that you're escaping the world. Firefriend seem more interested in staring at the world until it starts to dissolve. The guitars smear into the horizon. The electronics buzz like malfunctioning infrastructure. The rhythm section keeps the machinery moving. Voices emerge from the fog like transmissions from a planet that may already have received its final warning. And yet there is beauty in it. Because resistance doesn't necessarily have to sound like marching drums and shouted slogans. Sometimes it sounds like a band plugging in, turning everything up, and refusing to make the apocalypse sound comfortable. Now Cardinal Fuzz (UK) and Feeding Tube Records (USA) are giving Sulfur another trip around the sun, finally bringing on vinyl.