The dust has barely settled on last year’s “best of” music lists, yet there’s already a good contender for the 2024 tallies — and the artists just so happen to be from Chicago.
Friko, the project of singer-guitarist Niko Kapetan and drummer Bailey Minzenberger (along with newly inked bassist David Fuller), released its debut album, “Where We’ve Been, Where We Go From Here” on Feb. 16, leaving critics salivating over its cornucopia of auditory gifts. Pitchfork scored it a 7.9 out of 10, and a Paste review concludes Friko is “one of the most distinguished up-and-coming voices in all of indie-rock.”
A hearty mix of chamber folk, modern pop orchestras, moody post-punk, singer-songwriter confessionals and indie fuzz on songs like the heart-wrenching ballad “For Ella” and the more ebullient rock ode “Get Numb To It!,” the nine-track set is a musical travelogue worthy of its own passport.
Yet it was all dreamt up by students at Evanston Township High School, solidified in an apartment in Humboldt Park where Kapetan and Minzenberger now live with their house cat Jonathan, and finally perfected in the band’s musical lab, a rehearsal spot in West Town. And all of it done during off-hours not spent working, respectively, as an audio equipment warehouse specialist and financial planning services assistant.
The goal, says Kapetan, is to be able to focus on music full-time and quit the 9-to-5’s in the very near future, while Minzenberger would also like to open for Paramore someday (if we’re really talking total end goals) — and honestly both are very plausible if the band’s current trajectory stays in ascent. Since Friko signed last August with ATO Records (the home of fellow Chicago buzz acts Brigitte Calls Me Baby and Neal Francis, not to mention Black Pumas and Brittany Howard), attention has been drawn to the band like flares on a night sky.
Friko has booked gigs at SXSW and this week at Chicago’s Metro, while hinting that more is coming soon, and album release day was spent with in-store appearances at Reckless and Shuga Records like any veteran band might do.
But it wasn’t an overnight turnabout, says Kapetan. Not even close. “A lot of this stuff did come really suddenly once we announced the album, but it’s been a very slow build,” he shared during a recent Zoom chat. In fact, Friko started as his own bedroom project in high school, where he wowed tastemakers with his early demo, “Burnout Beautiful,” that introduced the emotional gravitas Kapetan was able to bring to his works.
At the time, he was in music theory classes at ETHS with Minzenberger (though they didn’t talk at the time); and upon graduation in 2019 they were formally introduced by friend and audio engineer Jack Henry and began putting the seeds together for current-day Friko alongside original bassist Luke Stamos. (They’re still friends and the band calls on Stamos when they need his low-register baritone for a track.)
From there it’s been nothing short of one smart move after another, allowing the band to find its footing in an organic way.
“Not that long ago we were playing DIY venues and downstairs at [Subterranean] and these smaller venues,” Kapetan added. “It has felt like a very steady build, and I’m glad it was that way because we got to know people in the scene.”
It’s a scene they’ve fit into quite well, tagging in after the incredible success of DIY bands Dehd, Horsegirl, Lifeguard, Beach Bunny and Melkbelly the past few years that have centered a bull’s-eye focus on Chicago’s once-again brimming indie roster.
“It’s an incredible music scene; there is so much good stuff happening here now and no shortage of amazing things to see. Everyone is also really kind and it feels like a team everywhere you go,” exclaimed Minzenberger, who loved a recent concert by fellow Chicago artist Nnamdï. “If you’re going to see a show it’s not just seeing a show because you spend it with people you love. It’s a really lively scene.”
Of course, the tentacles of Friko extend to several other key figures in the artists’ lives. For Minzenberger, it’s their classical guitarist dad, who quit gigging professionally by the time they were born but still introduced them to talents like Allan Holdsworth, Pat Metheny and John Abercrombie, as well as their ETHS band director Matt Bufis, whose passion and excitement, they said, “changed my perspective, especially my relationship with playing classical music.”
For Kapetan, it was animated children’s movies that helped “keep that youthful aspect to the music,” the Beatles (“I’m one of those kids raised on [them]”) as well as his own father. “My dad always loved guitar, it was a hobby for him. But he grew up in a very classic Greek family; they owned a dry cleaners and restaurants, and he never got to live out that dream in that sense,” Kapetan added, saying his parents have been very supportive. “We practiced in their basement up until a year ago.”
Truly, all of “Where We’ve Been, Where We Go From Here” was one big extended-family effort. Friend Alice Avery did a beautiful stop-motion video to accompany “For Ella,” and locals Jack Henry and Scott Tallarida engineered the album. “Everyone did it out of love, every hour spent on it was by people who really cared about it,” said Kapetan. “And really it was mostly all Chicago people on every aspect of it.”
