Salt Lake City’s lo-fi punk trio frick. has made a career out of keeping things short, sharp, and funny. Formed in 2020 as a solo project before solidifying into a full band two years later, they’ve already shared stages with Lit, Alien Ant Farm, Single Mothers, Keep Flying, and Off With Their Heads.
Every song clocks in under two minutes, touching on “dogs, shitty jobs, politics, relationships, and forgetting your phone charger.”
The new album “Clock Out,” released on October 15, 2025, stays true to that ethos. Vocalist and guitarist Brad, joined by Syd on drums and Ethan on bass, leans into the daily irritations that pile up like fast food wrappers on a passenger seat. It’s music about headaches, bad bosses, empty batteries, and fake smiles in company meetings.
Brad describes the opener “Manipulator” as “about shitty people getting the spotlight and/or power, like our current president, for example.” “Don’t Tell Me What To Do” came from an old job: “I had already been working there for a couple years before she was hired, so I knew I was already doing great at my job, so I pushed back when she’d try to get me to change… she eventually got fired so it all worked out in the end.”
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“Headache” deals with the kind of migraines that stop the world for a minute — “where you can’t think about anything other than just how bad your head hurts,” Brad says. In “Vampire,” he writes about “how reminders of shitty past relationships never really seem to go away.”
The band’s humor and self-awareness come out in “Rocker Hand Emoji,” which features a guest cameo from Kevin (aka K-Fern) from The Circle. “He very earnestly says ‘Frick!’ so I turned the subtitles on, took a picture of it, and posted it,” Brad recalls.
The collaboration grew from that post: “I shot him a message and he immediately said yes and emailed me an audio file of him saying it a few times, and then we made it happen.”
Other tracks stay close to Frick’s plainspoken charm. “No Rules” imagines a world where “you wouldn’t need to stop at stop signs, you could steal gas,” written, as Brad notes, just for fun.
“Brains” captures the grocery store moment where you forget what you came for. “Picky Eater” and “Phone Charger” continue that streak — small, relatable irritations turned into fast, scrappy anthems.
It all ends with “Clock Out,” a track about the soul drain of corporate life. “It’s frustrating that we can’t all just talk to each other like regular humans in those meetings,” Brad says. “It all feels so robotic and fake, and it makes me wish I didn’t have to actually work a job.”
Frick has already released eight EPs, one full-length album, and a compilation of 8-bit versions of their songs. “Clock Out” marks their second LP — another quick, dry-witted snapshot of life’s constant minor breakdowns.
