After years spent orbiting other people’s music, Avery Friedman’s debut LP ‘New Thing’ arrives as the first clear mark of her own trajectory. Out April 18 on Audio Antihero and Softseed Music, the album collects the earliest songs she’s ever written—recorded largely live with a group of collaborators who helped turn her private catharsis into something deeply textured and public.
Friedman, a Brooklyn-based songwriter originally from Cleveland, only began writing in 2023. The breakthrough happened unexpectedly: a campfire, a guitar passed around, and a moment where anxiety met expression. “New Thing is a conduit for emotions too frenetic to hold on your own,” she explains. “Many of these tracks were born of anxiety—from my turning to a guitar to externalize (and organize) a sense of chaos that otherwise felt trapped inside me.”
That moment of exposure—half-willing, half-compelled—led to encouragement from James Chrisman (Sister., CIAO MALZ) and Felix Walworth (Told Slant, Florist), both of whom would end up playing on and producing the record. The sessions, featuring contributions from Ryan Cox (Club Aqua) and Malia DelaCruz (CIAO MALZ), embraced Friedman’s inexperience not as a shortcoming, but as a method.
The group worked with what she brought: improvisation, nervous momentum, a raw impulse to say something before the courage fades.
The songs sit in that unsettled place, emotionally and musically. “Flowers Fell,” one of the first singles, uses seasonal change as metaphor for internal shifts. “The flowers fell off when I was asleep / But that’s okay, ‘cause now it’s all green,” Friedman sings, with a tone that’s less resolved than simply ready to face what’s next. It’s a track that opens and contracts, with bursts of guitar like nervous ticks.
Other songs, like “Photo Booth” and the title track “New Thing,” extend this emotional language into lo-fi dream pop, folk textures, and diaristic lyrics that never tip into oversharing.
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The influence of artists like Adrianne Lenker, Squirrel Flower, and Babehoven can be felt, but Friedman’s voice doesn’t mimic—it emerges from the same headspace, full of static, heat, and careful tension.
The record feels like something necessary—a year’s worth of difficult growth made audible. “What results is a time capsule for a year of intense personal expansion in my life,” Friedman says. “And the layers of warmth, wonder, sensitivity, and sharpness that come with growing.”
Friedman played her first shows last summer, often solo, and shared bills with artists like h. pruz, Sister., and Dead Gowns. Those performances mirrored the tone of the album: stripped back, nervous but direct, emotionally spacious. ‘New Thing’ doesn’t polish over any of that. It lets it breathe.
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This isn’t a reinvention or a fully-formed debut as much as it’s an honest start—songs that had to be written because they wouldn’t stay quiet any longer. And now they’re here.
