Filthy Friends
Invitation
Release Date: Aug 25, 2017
Genre(s): Pop/Rock
Record label: Kill Rock Stars
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Album Review: Invitation by Filthy Friends
Very Good, Based on 8 Critics
Based on rating 4/5
What began as an informal live entity in 2012 has finally grown into something more substantial for Portland-based Filthy Friends. Led by Sleater-Kinney’s Corin Tucker and ex-R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck, the ensemble – which also includes King Crimson drummer Bill Rieflin, guitarist Kurt Bloch and the Young Fresh Fellows/Minus 5 stalwart Scott McCaughey on bass – have made good on the promise of last year’s fiery antiTrump rant Despierta.
Based on rating 4/5
I t was the day Princess Diana died that ex-REM guitarist Peter Buck first saw Sleater-Kinney play. He immediately wanted to form a band with singer Corin Tucker. Twenty years on, the pair release this promising debut with band members borrowed from King Crimson and Seattle stalwarts Fastbacks and Young Fresh Fellows. There.
Based on rating 4/5
Filthy Friends might be a new band, but there’s plenty of past form here. Their lead singer is Corin Tucker of Sleater-Kinney fame, while REM’s Peter Buck is on guitar duty. The five-piece is rounded up by Kurt Block of The Fastbacks, guitarist Scott McCaughey and Bill Rieflin, who drums for King Crimson. If that seems like a somewhat motley crew, the five have actually all known each other for years – McCaughey, for example, was a long-term touring member of REM – and their disparate musical histories coalesce here into something totally effortless but thoroughly compelling.
Based on rating 4.0/5
Holding onto the past won’t make it repeat,” sings Sleater-Kinney’s Corin Tucker on “Despierata,” the opening track on Filthy Friends’s Invitation. The politically charged single, released just weeks before the 2016 presidential election, obliquely yet unmistakably references those who pine for a past they see only through a sepia-toned lens, wishing they could reclaim a vision of their country that exists only in their imaginations. It also serves as a battle cry for Tucker and her band of co-conspirators—R.
Based on rating 3.5/5
On this Pacific Northwest indie-rock summit, Sleater-Kinney's Corin Tucker joins R.E.M.'s Peter Buck in a band unafraid to evoke their signature sounds. Check the Reckoning séance "Any Kind of Crowd." But the LP's second half gets even more interesting. On "Come Back Shelley," Tucker seems to reimagine the Beatles' "She's Leaving Home" via T. Rex and Patti Smith; on "Invitation," she nails an uncharacteristic folk-blues strut.
Based on rating 3.5/5
There’s a refreshingly twisted poetry in having a group fronted by indie and major label luminaries Peter Buck (R. E. M.
Based on rating 5/10
Their debut album as Filthy Friends , Invitation, came together on an informal basis in Portland, Oregon after years of mutual appreciation. Yet from the opener .
Opinion: Fairly Good
R.E.M.’s Peter Buck and Sleater-Kinney’s Corin Tucker were mutual admirers of each other’s bands since the ’90s, so some kind of collaboration seemed inevitable down the road. Now “Invitation” (Kill Rock Stars), the debut album by their new band Filthy Friends, has finally arrived. Buck and Tucker, joined by longtime indie mainstays Kurt Bloch (Fastbacks), Scott McCaughey (Young Fresh Fellows, Minus 5) and Bill Rieflin (King Crimson), formed Filthy Friends five years ago as an excuse to simply play together. At one point, the band performed a bunch of David Bowie songs in a tribute concert.
'Invitation'
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