Upcoming Releases

Nashville-based heavy duo Friendship Commanders are excited to announce their new album BEAR out October 10 on their new label home Magnetic Eye Records.The duo is loudly introducing the upcoming release with two dynamic new tracks, "KEEPING SCORE" and "MELT" and their accompaying music videos. 

The dual singles illustrate the tonal expansiveness contained within the ten-track body of work; there is heaviness and also a kind of lightness. "KEEPING SCORE" sees songwriter Buick Audra confront cycles of women injuring girls due to being threatened by their existence, something she experienced personally. "MELT" addresses the loneliness and confusion that comes with being rejected by members of one's own gender in adulthood.

Of the singles, Audra says:

"'KEEPING SCORE' was the first song written for BEAR. I think of it as the mother of the album. When I was a kid, the mother of my best friend, a boy, singled me out as a problem for her son and all the other boys in our skateboarding crew. She was afraid I was corrupting them somehow. She called around and spread non-truths about me to the other parents, some of whom I'd never met. It was devastating, humiliating beyond words. Years later, I realized women in my own generation were doing the same thing to little girls who knew their sons. Little girls! Age seven, eight! Being called "hussies" by grown women! Color me horrified. Color me involved. Now that I can speak for myself, I will also speak for girls like me. Someone should. The propulsive riff on this song is my war cry."

"'MELT' is about realizing I've never really fit with my own kind, something I've only come to terms with in the last two years or so. I've spent so much time and energy trying to be a woman among women, but at the end of the day, I'm just always over here being too loud. Too much. And yet, somehow also not enough. It's a stunning paradox. Musically, the song has a sugary quality to it, which is also referenced in the line, 'that's how they punch you, sugar over fists.' This track beats me up because it's so painfully true, but it's also a delight to play."

FC drummer and bassist Jerry Roe says:

“These songs were so exciting to hear when Buick played them for me for the first time - pretty unlike anything we’d ever done up to this point in terms of energy and propulsion. Our music has tended to move either fast or slow while somehow feeling heavy at all times, and these songs lean and move forward in a way that’s much brighter and quite joyful, even through the subject matter. To play them almost feels like being flown through the air towards a gigantic bullseye made of fiery confetti! I can’t wait to play this new album live.”

Written around the realization that she had essentially been kicked out of womanhood, Buick Audra wrote BEAR to document her awarenesses while cataloging other areas of human connection: art, outsider culture, and dark rock venues—all places where empathy and creativity grow wild. She and Jerry Roe arranged and performed the album to have two sides to it, musically: heavy and light. Salt and sugar. Fire and air. Lost and found. They are elated to share it with the world.

Bear track listing:

1. KEEPING SCORE
2. DRAIN
3. DRIPPING SILVER
4. MELT
5. NEW
6. X
7. MIDHEAVEN
8. IMPERFECT
9. FOUND
10. DEAD & DISCARDED GIRLS