The Frights started on a whim. Mucking about after high school to pass the time and one thirty-minute set quickly grew into a career, five years in the making. Their second album, ‘You Are Going To Hate This’ toyed with expectations and confronted self-doubt head-on, under a flurry of fuzzy surf-punk abandon. Third album ‘Hypochondriac’ sees them once again team up with FIDLAR’s Zac Carper, but that’s where the similarities end.
Lead single ‘Crutch’ is a gnarled, vicious attack on the band itself, all frustrated beating heart and end of their tether release. “I do have a serious love/hate relationship with being in a band,” admits Mikey Carnevale, ahead of The Frights first ever show in the UK.
“I feel like a piece of shit for feeling shitty about it because it is sick. This is my job, and everyone wants to do this. If you’re into music, you want to be in a band. But it is fucking exhausting. It sucks a lot, and no one really wants to talk about that.”
A few hours later, as the band tear through their set at Brighton’s Green Door Store as part of Upset’s Great Escape show, it’s nothing but glorious fun. ‘Crutch’ might pull apart how hard being in a band is, nowhere to hide and with no shame in the struggle, but The Frights haven’t lost that spark.
‘Hypochondriac’ crackles with blistering, bubbling newness. It’s the sound of a band letting go and getting loose.
“There’s only one ‘Crutch’ on that record,” promises Jordan. Everything else is completely different.
