Love the Stranger is the fourth studio album by Philadelphia indie rock band Friendship, released July 29, 2022, by Merge Records, their debut with the label. The album was recorded at Big Nice Studio in Lincoln, Rhode Island, and produced by the band along with Bradford Krieger.
Singles and music videos
Four singles were released ahead of the album: "Ugly Little Victory" on April 20, 2022, alongside the announcement of the band's signing with Merge; "Hank" on May 17, with the announcement of the album; "Alive Twice" on June 13; and "Chomp Chomp" on July 12.
"Hank" was released along with a music video directed by comedian Joe Pera. The video, "a characteristically Pera-esque slice of life" per Jack Meyer of Paste, follows a painter named Kaitlyn and a woodworker named Henry through "the rocky shores and spruce-speckled woods" of Little Cranberry Island, where frontman Dan Wriggins once worked as a lobster fisherman just off the coast of his native Maine. Henry is depicted constructing a church while Kaitlyn paints the shoreline. The video was edited by Grant Farsi and shot by Pera and Michael Kaplan. Per Pera, the video came from a brainstorming session with Wriggins and drummer Michael Cormier-O'Leary. Another video was released for "Alive Twice", also shot by Kaplan, which includes footage of the Black Angel at Iowa City's Oakland Cemetery.
Style and reception
AllMusic's Marcy Donelson calls the album "typically low-key and rustic in nature, with touches of (mostly) atmospheric keyboards and electronics" but "further distinguished by the use of brief instrumentals that make up about one-third of its extensive track list". Opener "St. Bonaventure" places "[lead vocalist Dan] Wriggins' craggy, conversational delivery ... over lap steel, sparse guitars, simple bass and drums, and part-time vocal harmonies" which "sets the tone for much of a weary group of songs in the drudgery of the everyday, although it never quite stagnates." On the other hand, "lusher", "crunchier" "Ryde" "adopts the elemental percussion and minor intervals of a work song until it breaks open into an organ- and strings-accompanied version of heartland rock." Despite other diversions, such as the "rare extended-chord exploration" on "Love's" and "Kum & Go"'s incorporation of "Southwestern Europe-style guitar and accordion", by the album's end "it has never quite abandoned its back-porch feel or relentlessly existential point of view, closing on the words 'Down here in the greasy mess/Hoping for the best.'" The Arts Desks Kieron Tyler says that on Love the Stranger, the band "deal in an unhurried Americana which is never far from familiar touchstones", such as "Mr. Chill" which contains "hints of the 1970 Gene Clark song "One in a Hundred" and "Green on Red-esque "Ryde" which "is as strident as it gets." Tyler closes by saying the album "defines its space with clarity", that world being one "where overstatement is anathema, where wonder is found no matter how much hurt has been dealt out."