Brooklyn’s Avery Friedman only began playing live shows in 2024, and didn’t spend years honing her sound before the recording and release of her 2025 debut ‘New Thing’, so the album’s songs still have an element of freshness and occasional naivete. You couldn’t call the material raw, though, or even suggest its potential has been sold short in any way. The best of the record’s eight songs represent brilliantly crafted indie pop, often sharing a sound that’s much older than Friedman’s years, but everything is presented in a hugely confident manner.

Things start very gently with ‘Into’, a glorified intro presenting Avery strumming on a solo electric guitar, weaving a neo-psychedelic melody and occasionally dropping spoken word passages against the trippy backdrop. From a melodic perspective, there are strong callbacks to the quiet Smashing Pumpkins material circa ‘Siamese Dream’ and ‘Pisces Iscariot’, which will be more than enough to pique the interest of some listeners. Without a break, the last notes of this short piece flow into the album’s title cut which retains Avery’s relatively jangly guitar sound and augments it with brighter sounding harmonics. Over the course of a couple of bars, this sets up a great atmosphere, but the track comes into its own once a natural drum part beefs up the sound, and a slightly hazy vocal – drawing influence from Juliana Hatfield, the quieter moments of Nina Gordon’s work and a couple of dream pop acts – takes centre stage. With an almost otherworldly approach, Friedman’s revisiting of a very 90s sound quickly starts to sound like a trippy dream, and even when a louder lead guitar introduces a few swirly shoegaze influences at the climax and the artist sounds as if they’re heading for a complete wig-out, the melody retains a strange and woozy feel that feels perfect for an alternative summer soundtrack.

Working a little more within the more “traditional” dream pop mould, the singer songwriter delivers a potential cult classic with ‘Flowers Fell’. The arrangement makes no secret of its musical intent when slow, slightly reverbed guitar chords ring forth, but there are even dreamier aspects coming through a slightly lax vocal and mellow bass. Best of all, though, is Avery’s vocal, which floats against the trippy retro indie sounds with a confident nonchalance that manages to sound like something from the genre’s pinnacle. This is a superb example of how music can transport the listener away from their daily stresses. This doesn’t have the completely chilled vibe of an on form Mazzy Star, but there’s certainly a strong callback to the very best sounds of Elastic Sleep and The Sundays, as well as links with the more contemporary Cathedral Bells and anocean. Despite working some very familiar musical tropes, it’s a track that has a massive appeal. A little more direct, ‘Photo Booth’ has a great crossover sound. The huge mechanical rhythm that’s set in place from the outset gives the track an 80s heart which, along with a few wibbling keys, makes for something a little retro. This isn’t a love letter to the past, though: building on those elements, Avery adds a more contemporary quality via a hushed vocal that, at times, feels a little aloof, but still conveys a strong melody. Then, there’s a world of distortion that helps steer this somewhere different again, melding a pop sensibility with a fuzzy indie quality that’s bound to click with those who actively seek out underground sounds. It’s not a track that’s big on hooks, but, as with the prior tracks, the atmosphere that Friedman builds here is superb.

Changing the mood slightly, Friedman favours a darker guitar tone throughout ‘Finger Painting’, and the percussion-free opening verse immediately casts her in the mould of Elliot Smith crossed with a far less broken Syd Barrett. It’s not all gloom, though: bringing in a steady beat for the second verse and beyond, the track slowly adopts more of an accessible 90s indie feel, and by the time the volume of the guitar allows for more of a solid, jangling sound to take centre stage, Avery’s blend of dream pop crossed with early Heather Nova influences sounds great. This would be a stand out track even if everything stopped there, but with another cranking of the volume, the arrival of bigger drums and a bit of distortion, the arrangement reaches for a rocky climax that fuses a bit of shoegaze with a bubble-grunge forcefulness, suggesting that Friedman could really rock out, should the situation require her to do so, or that her live performances might take on more of a wall of sound approach at times.

‘Somewhere To Go’ immediately returns to a more minimalist stance, but the blend of bigger vocal and slightly distorted guitar sets up a great semi lo-fi sound, before Friedman fills space with the help of layered vocals and odd drones. Reaching for something a little more introspective, this is a track that needs a little more time to make an impression, but in terms of a “mood piece”, it’s definitely interesting. The guitar tones heard throughout ‘Biking Standing’, coupled with a slow rhythm, return the core sound back to the trippier Pumpkins influence, but Avery’s natural vocal gives the piece more of its own identity, and as with the previous track, the layering of voices really lifts the piece, before the closing ‘Nervous’ presents stately acoustic guitar lines against off-kilter electronica elements, leaving Friedman to hold everything together with a soft indie-folk voice. To her credit, she works with this minimalist backdrop brilliantly, sharing a voice that aches with sadness, whilst still retaining a friendly tone. As the melody builds, the vocal takes a back seat at first, humming against the rising indie pop sound; when the second half of the track hits its stride, the fey vocal, pointed lead guitar, sparse piano and strummed acoustic set up a slightly uneasy world of sound, but if you’ve journeyed with Avery Friedman this far, chances are you’ll love what you hear.

With one foot in the well of nostalgia and the other in the present, Avery aims to please a broad spectrum of indie fans with ‘New Thing’. Despite sometimes sounding like a massively familiar echo of the past, or perhaps precisely because of that, the material conveys a massive confidence throughout. You might find yourself drowning in atmospheres rather than discovering a world of singable songs, but this is a great debut from one of 2025’s finest emerging talents – a record that more than delivers on the promise of its pre-released singles. A highly recommended listen.

July 2025