Filthy Friends - Invitation

I’m always leery when record labels bill a band a supergroup.  I can’t think of a single time frankly where a supergroup was formed that didn’t sound like either a cobbled together musical mess of mediocrity or a collection of a couple great songs by one or two of the members and that would be it.

(OK, so I kind of liked Audioslave and well, frankly Summers and Marr were pretty good in Electronic…)

But then along comes Filthy Friends with their album, Invitation, and well, are you ready to rock?

Filthy Friends is a supergroup by virtue of having Corin Tucker from Sleater-Kinney and Peter Buck together, along with Bill Rieflin from King Crimson and a couple other musicians from Portland.

Invitation sounds less like a cobbled together collection of great musicians, than a very organic, explosive and cohesive collection of strong rock and roll songs.  Throw Corin Tucker and her attitude-drenched, salty rich voice over the top of some of Peter Buck’s best guitar pieces you’ve ever heard, and pay great homage to some of the best of 90s rock and this album is just plain awesome to crank up and enjoy.

If there is ever an underrated guitarist in all of alternative rock over the last 30 years, it be Peter Buck. (The other most underrated alternative guitarist over the last 30 years is Steve Wynn of The Dream Syndicate—I saw them both at one concert a very long time ago and it was during REMs heavy time…Remember ‘Begin the Begin’?  And if you haven’t been following Steve Wynn since his Dream Syndicate days, you’ve missed out on some of the great guitar songs of all time…)

Invitation is one of the better alternative albums out in what is arguably a banner year in alternative music.  Corin has one of the more perfect alternative voices that beg comparisons to La Sera and the Dum Dum Girls, and while both of these bands celebrate Sleater-Kinney as an influence, neither of them have Peter Buck ripping it up on guitar song after song.

It all sounds like they’ve been working together for years.  The opening track, ‘Despierta’ starts things off and Corin sounds remarkably like a young Patti Smith and the music rollicks along with the same exuberance of many of the tracks on REM’s last and woefully underrated final album, Collapse Into Now. (Perhaps the greatest final album by an historically significant band there has ever been…)

Invitation is an invite to hopefully a lasting musical relationship between Corin and Peter and the band.  They were made for each other and such songs as the opening track, ‘ Brother’ and ‘No Forgotten Son’ show they have the chops to bring down the house.  An excellent album filled with unexpected chemistry and intensity.  A top ten album of 2017.