Brooklyn-based singer/songwriter Avery Friedman transforms chaos into catharsis and vulnerability into daring self-expression on her breathtaking debut album ‘New Factor,’ a uncooked, radiant document of reckoning, awakening, and launch.
for followers of Phoebe Bridgers, Samia, Mitski, Lizzy McAlpine
Stream: ‘New Factor’ – Avery Friedman
Tright here’s one thing quietly seismic about Avery Friedman’s debut album.
It doesn’t scream, however it doesn’t whisper both. It’s a charged and churning journey in and of itself, and but it’s nonetheless only a starting, the beginning of the artist’s story – and an aptly-titled one, at that. A vessel of visceral, tender turmoil, New Factor is the form of document that sneaks up on you, unfolding with aching honesty and a disarming emotional gravity. With unvarnished lyrics and uncooked, immersive preparations and the toe the road between the the ‘indie people’ and ‘indie rock’ genres, Friedman captures the uncontainable mess of being alive – the attractive, brutal blur of changing into. It’s a soundtrack for coming undone and coming house to your self on the identical time.
Atwood Journal is proud to be premiering New Factor, out April 18th, 2025 through Audio Antihero. Born out of necessity, trauma, and an pressing must create, New Factor marks the extraordinary starting of an artist who as soon as thought music was one thing meant for different individuals. Recorded with members of Florist, Sister., and Informed Slant, this album is as collaborative as it’s confessional — a dwelling, respiration doc of transformation. From quiet self-interrogations to unfiltered moments of catharsis, Friedman invitations us into her world not with polished poise, however with trembling palms and a full, open coronary heart.
“These are the primary songs I’ve ever written, and I’m so grateful for the shape they’ve taken,” Friedman tells Atwood Journal. “Largely, they catalogue a time of nice growth and progress in my life – with the pursuit of music itself being a big a part of that growth. They cowl themes of hysteria, anticipation, change, and experimentation, and I believe these themes got here throughout sonically, within the manufacturing, as effectively.”
In contrast to a lot of her friends, songwriting is a comparatively current pursuit for Avery Friedman.
Born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, she moved to Brooklyn in 2019 with no plans of changing into a musician. Music was one thing she beloved from afar – she performed guitar and at instances wrote about it, however it was one thing different individuals did. However within the spring of 2023, an ideal storm of inspiration and upheaval cracked one thing open. A traumatic mugging, the lingering aftershock of concern, and a transcendent stay music expertise converged, and immediately, songwriting grew to become a lifeline: a means out of her head, and into her coronary heart. “For some time after I used to be robbed, strolling round didn’t really feel the identical,” she shares. “I wanted a special approach to course of. That’s what my guitar grew to become.”
What adopted was much less a profession pivot than a private unearthing: an act of light, persistent defiance in opposition to concern, doubt, and long-held concepts of what she may or couldn’t do. Friedman didn’t set out with a grasp plan for New Factor – solely the need to make one thing actual, one thing that appeared like her. And she or he didn’t do it alone. Welcomed right into a tight-knit inventive group, she discovered not solely collaborators, however coconspirators: Artists who noticed her imaginative and prescient earlier than she may absolutely title it herself, and who helped deliver her fledgling songs to life with care, curiosity, and a shared sense of function.
“I met a lot of my collaborators via somebody I used to be in a relationship with on the time who can also be within the band Sister.,” Friedman explains. “She generously welcomed me into her musical group and inspired me to collaborate with James Chrisman (Sister.), Felix Walworth (Informed Slant, Florist), and Malia DelaCruz (CIAO MALZ). James and Felix, particularly, had been deeply concerned in my music-making course of from the beginning. They had been essential collaborators in each sense; from ethical help to hours spent recording and in rehearsals, ushering these songs into existence.”
There was no grand blueprint for New Factor – no stress to chase perfection or adhere to expectation.
As a substitute, Friedman targeted on feeling her means ahead, led by intuition and emotion somewhat than any mounted finish objective. The method was exploratory, even sacred at instances: An area the place vulnerability may take form in sound, and the place the music itself grew to become a mirror of her interior world.
“With these being my first assortment of songs, and first expertise recording music, I admittedly didn’t have a concrete imaginative and prescient for this LP,” she admits. “Greater than something, I had the intention and need to create one thing that felt like an genuine expression of myself, my music style — and to create songs that I’d genuinely wish to hearken to.”
That deep stage of belief and collaboration allowed Friedman to shed any expectations — each exterior and self-imposed — and easily comply with the place the songs led. With out formal coaching or a preconceived imaginative and prescient, she approached her debut with extensive eyes and an open coronary heart, permitting the music to kind organically round her lived experiences, instincts, and emotional truths.
“In making this document, I gave myself permission to give up to authenticity, and to middle my rawest feelings in my art-making. I hope it captures my vary of feeling, my proclivity for poetry, and the actual depth with which I expertise my emotionality – and the way I’m drawn to that depth within the artwork I really like (to make and devour) probably the most.”
Friedman formally debuted to the world final November with “Flowers Fell,” a mild big of a track that aches in and out.
Meditative and melancholic, but quietly hopeful, the observe captures the disorientation of change and the gradual, stunning grace of acceptance. “The flowers fell off after I was asleep / Nevertheless it’s okay, ’trigger now it’s all inexperienced,” she sings like a mantra, grounding the track’s emotional core in a fleeting pure metaphor. What begins as a mirrored image on seasonal shifts quickly turns into a collage of reminiscence: rooftops and sidewalks, picture cubicles and grocery lists, moments of intimacy now held at a distance. It’s the sound of somebody processing loss in actual time — not with bitterness, however with softness. As an introduction, “Flowers Fell” speaks volumes: it’s understated, unassuming, and quietly devastating, opening the door to the depth and nuance that defines New Factor.
Greene Avenue
footsteps sound the identical
And also you
we’re wanting down at your footwear
And we
couldn’t cease kissing
On the roof
sidewalks, picture cubicles
The flowers fell off after I was asleep
Nevertheless it’s okay, ‘trigger now it’s all inexperienced
The flowers fell off after I was asleep
Nevertheless it’s okay, ‘trigger now it’s all inexperienced
Additional singles adopted – the electrifying fever dream “Picture Sales space” this previous February, and the searing, soul-stirring title observe, “New Factor,” in late March. “To me, ‘Flowers Fell’ feels prefer it encapsulates quite a lot of the totally different sonic instructions the document goes in, so it felt like an applicable introduction to the physique of labor as a complete,” Friedman provides. “‘Picture Sales space’ is probably the most pop-adjacent track on the album, and I assumed its catchiness and sparkliness was applicable for a single. ‘New Factor’ is one in every of my favourite songs I’ve written, and to me it represents a extremely pure type of my songwriting and private expression. I needed it to have a second to itself within the highlight.”
That sense of non-public significance is precisely why Friedman selected “New Factor” to call the album as effectively — a phrase that not solely nods to the track’s emotional weight, but in addition to the sheer magnitude of embarking on this inventive journey within the first place.
“I felt like calling the document this was a bit cheeky and meta,” she smiles. It is usually simply descriptive of the momentous novelty of constructing the album.”
It’s somewhat little bit of a brand new factor
It’s somewhat laborious to foretell
And I can’t fairly describe it
Nevertheless it’s like a magnet flipped
(Flipped)
It’s somewhat little bit of a brand new factor
It’s a factor of the previous
On the sting of my seat now
And there’s crack in my snigger
(In my snigger)
It’s somewhat little bit of a brand new factor
I received shit to redirect
Little lace of black licorice
Pulling knots in my chest
(In my chest)
At its coronary heart, New Factor is “a conduit for feelings too frenetic to carry by yourself,” as Friedman so candidly places it.
“Many of those tracks had been born of hysteria – from my turning to a guitar to externalize (and arrange) a way of chaos that in any other case felt trapped inside me,” she confides. “We recorded the majority of it with a stay band as a way to keep up the uncooked vitality on the middle of the document. What outcomes is a time capsule for a 12 months of intense private growth in my life – and the layers of heat, marvel, sensitivity, and sharpness that include rising.”
Pressed to sum up New Factor in simply three phrases, Friedman lands on a putting trifecta: lush, insistent, on-edge. It’s an apt description for a document that pulses with feeling – without delay grounded in intimacy and buzzing with a stressed emotional present.
That emotional present runs deep all through the album, threading its means via each sound and story. As a budding lyricist, Friedman is most happy with the moments the place nuance and depth coexist – the place language turns into each puzzle and launch.
“I actually just like the lyrics on ‘Finger Portray,’” she smiles. “The verses learn, deliberately, like a riddle, and the choruses are daring and direct. I’m into that duality. I additionally really feel happy with ‘Someplace to Go,’ and the way its lyrics swirl across the sensation of feeling trapped in a means that in the end felt like a meditation and a launch to put in writing.”
New Factor is, at its core, a reckoning – with concern, with freedom, with the unfamiliar thrill of entering into your individual voice. It’s the sound of an artist embracing uncertainty, letting go of perfection, and daring to doc the messy, magnificent act of changing into. By means of aching vulnerability and unfiltered expression, Friedman has crafted a debut that doesn’t simply introduce her artistry – it invitations listeners into an area of reflection, connection, and catharsis.
“Truthfully, I hope that listeners really feel like it’s a protected place to maneuver via their less-cozy feelings in a contained means,” she shares. “I additionally hope they really feel impressed to make artwork too, in the event that they’ve ever felt a nudge to do one thing like that.”
Stream New Factor solely on Atwood Journal, and step into the uncooked, radiant world of Avery Friedman — the place each lyric is a lifeline, each melody a mirror. Susceptible, visceral, and vividly alive, this debut doesn’t simply mark the beginning of an artist’s journey; it invitations us to reimagine on our personal.
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© Mamie Heldman
an album by Avery Friedman