As the drummer of the spasmodic uber-ground band "The Oxes", Chris Freeland has provided the rhythmic undertow for what Blow Torch Monkey Armada called "Fucked up metallic math rock" and the Village Voice recommended for fans of "elementary arithmetic." Consistently plying away in multiple time signatures, Freeman’s drumming has been an instrumental part of the hyper-real ubiquity and the salacious infamy that has defined the Oxes’ rise to international renown..
Now, Freeland has transferred his prodigious skills and applied them to his first solo project "Frenemies." Imbued with same eclecticism of form and style that characterized the Oxes first two outings, Freeland has added vocal and range and inchoate lyricism to a cross pollinated record that defies categorization.
Shifting from cartilage shaking hip-hop on "Step 1" to catatonic rock with "Moving Day", the album seethes with vocal hydraulic hooks born on the other side of the singer non-grata equation. Add the fermented acoustic guitar strung over a desiccated sing-sing beat in "New Room" and you’ll know that Frenemies trips over boundaries, pushing the reset button on the limits of the art=rock equation.
Members:
Chris Freeland, Anna Messing, Zack Poff, Dan Keech, Mickey Freeland, Laura Webster, Jones, Ryan Kidjwell, Adam Savage, Katherine St. Paul Hill, Virginia Hawthorne.
Frenemies is the solo project of Chris Freeland, drummer for that furiously algebraic band that spawned a thousand college-town lessers, the Oxes. Which means that Frenemies crawls across the hallowed sod lain by past drummer branch-outs, i.e. the careers of the Foo Fighters, Sparrow, Phil Collins, Gary Young, Charlie Watts, and Ringo Starr. Those who prefer to describe the Oxes' output in the lingo of car-porn ("high octane," "full throttle") should be warned that Frenemies' music is an ounce more fanciful and diverse than that of Freeland's other combo. The weirdness of Baltimore informs this disc's tonelessness, spontaneity, and incoherence. The listener imagines the scene there as a clandestine commune; bands must sneak into their stuffy art spaces, darting past Orioles scalpers, tiptoeing around urban chickens, and creeping past the corner bars where a Redskins doo-rag can either get you beaten up or felt up. How can such duress not lead to arrested development, or worse, batting-cage hissyfits? How do Baltimore artists grow past a fascination with wigs, boogers, and bicycles? This album's title track wails, tellingly, "I'm not a friend, why should I be/ I got all my friends in Baltimore here with me," and later, "I've got all my friends from high school here with me." Friendship drifts like a nitrous zeppelin, from after-school punk, to noodly art-flux, to interesting anti-rap, to splendid loner-pop. I assume that Freeland designed every sound here, except for the happy-hour choir parts, the female vox that kick off "Moving Day", and the rhymes of Bow & Arrow (though I have to believe that Cex, listed as a "Frenemy" in the liner notes, served as a consultant for the heinous flow on the "hip-hop" tracks-- which, to their credit, always feature elegantly pimpy key loops). A creative mania compensates for Freeland's half-hearted genre-splicing; fans of the one-take (pre-Geffen) Beck may fawn, as could proponents of Space Needle's analog blasts and ironic wanderscapes. "Big 4 You" is the funkiest keeper, about vowing to disinter up a buried-alive companion, even if the speaker's fingernails break. "Love", meanwhile, is the disc's best manifestation of post-Tortoise xerox-jazz, pumping like an autistic opus penned by Jaco Pastorius' ghost through the lovable contraption from both Short Circuits. Baltimore is America's cluttered attic, and Freeland's freeform songs are tossing some of the junk into the sideyard. The weak singing limits the proceedings somewhat; think Callaci from Refrigerator, or Beaujon from Eggs. The Rapture and Hot Hot Heat, et cetera, may be getting the dancefloor scuffed with their rangeless frontmen, but the persistence of Thom Yorke and the emergence of The Darkness' Justin Hawkins are raising the bar beyond even Freddy Mercury's operatic stunt-pipes. "Step 1" may offer DFA-worthy old-school skreeback, but this release knows that it's ultimately as ethereal as SARS. Frenemies just want to hang out. — Pitchforkmedia.com, William Bowers, December 8th, 2003
Now look, this album rules, but but but, you’ve got to give it a chance, you got to let it breath. The opening track, Love, will get you straight away with it’s early IQ Beef In Box scratchy brefusion, the rest of it is just toooooooooooooooo damn weird for its own good, but hey, once you’ve opened the door and let it in then you’ll soon come to realise that this album totally utterly rules……. Love is this breezy/clever/simple instrumental that really does taste of things like Ring or very early lo-fi IQ, it’s too happy and inviting and warm to be maths rock, but it is and it all adds up and two plus two do really make five and who is this? Frenemies? Great name, (great artwork), never heard of them? Ah, it’s all makes sense now, if we had know beforehand that it was Chris Freeland from Oxes then we have expected something this brilliant… Chris provided Oxes with that rhythmic undertow and while this is nothing like the mathematical pronkoid metal that they throw out in such a gloriously destructive way, it is as equally prodigious/rewarding/eclectic/excellent. Hey, think Beck back in the day when he was still getting parking violations and problems with maggots and he wasn’t the accepted alternative mainstream, think back when Beck was poor and as a result creatively brilliant - think scratch lo-fi Big Audio Dynamite/Clash with unobtrusive sparse breathy cleverness and with just so so much to hang on to, think really off kilter weird ass hip-hop drive-by lo-fi art rock….. Look, it’s best to just not think anything, just throw your arms open and invite it right in because this really is one of the very best albums you’re going to hear this year. Think cross pollinating things that have been cross pollinated again after the first germination. Friendship is just so upliftingly good, you’re going to have to have it on repeat. An album that defies all know boundaries, an album you have to make the effort to hear, if you don’t instantly love it (forget all that stuff I said about needing to give it a chance), if you don’t instantly love it then you’re not really alive. It’s out in the UK on December 8th, it’s distributed by Cargo and you’ll find out more at www.frenemies.com – hey look, please please do make the effort……. — Organ Magazine
As drummer with Baltimore’s bass-less jazz-rockers Oxes, Chris Freeland has familiarized himself with the convoluted underbelly of the rock mainstream for much of his musical career. Frenemies - his debut solo venture - finds him shifting away from his band’s metallic, instrumental wig outs and moving dangerously close to commercial accession. For with ‘Friendship’ Freeland has added accessibility to his renowned rhythmic talents and subsequently opened up his muse to a more orthodox audience. Through some gentle vocal loops, and a wealth of pop - yes pop - sensibilities, an eclecticism (buffed hip hop, sun-scorched acoustics and 60’s power pop) is embraced that is a distant cousin of The Oxes unshifting scientific rock. He’d do well to lend the venture much attention. — Logo Magazine, Josh Timber
