Nashville heavy duo Friendship Commanders present “High Sun,” the third single from their forthcoming album, MASS, out September 29. The project is a concept record about memory, language, and the state of Massachusetts, a place where songwriter/guitarist/vocalist Buick Audra spent time as an adolescent and younger adult. She was prompted to write the ten-track body of work after the death of a longtime friend Marc Orleans (Sunburned Hand of the Man, Spore, Juneau, Enos Slaughter). “High Sun” recounts the chaos and injury that she endured at the end of her time in Mass, a time when there were more apologists than allies in her world, and when she became a scapegoat.
The video for “High Sun” was directed by Buick Audra, shot by Jerry Roe and Buck Audra, and edited by Jerry Roe. Super 8 footage was combined with high-resolution digital imagery to separate timelines and illustrate past and present.
Of the song Buick Audra says:
“When I moved away from Boston, I hauled an enormous amount of shame along with me. I had experienced these weird, high-impact moments that were not only troubling on their own, but the aftermath saw me painted as an outcast in my former social groups. And I was young enough to believe that I was the problem. I had been in one controlling relationship in which being different was treated as disobedient, and I was punished for it—publicly. Being a person who was wired to take on blame, I absorbed it. But now when I look at the story, I see the manipulation, the dynamics that repeated themselves. They were experts at making people feel like outsiders, experts at deflecting responsibility. I wanted to drag it all out into the daylight with this big, fuzzy song. I’ve been waiting a long time to say this.”
MASS is a ten-track body of work that will be accompanied by a memoir in essays by Buick Audra. The album and essay collection present a series of true stories, snapshots of experiences that Buick lived through and has come back to address.
While the forthcoming album is autobiographical, it invites the listener to ask themselves about what they understand of their past, and how that knowledge colors their present.
The artwork for MASS and its related singles was done by Buick Audra using the cyanotype printing method, a process chosen to illustrate how her memories have been colored by trauma, all blue. A limited edition of hand-numbered and signed cyanotype prints will be made available with the album, as well as an essay collection by Buick Audra (MASS: Essays on Memory, Language, & the State of Massachusetts), prose that further explores the narratives and themes of the music.
The band co-produced MASS with Kurt Ballou (Converge) who recorded and mixed at his GodCity studio in Salem, Massachusetts. This decision was intentional, and the product bears the impact of the in-person collaboration, sonically and energetically. This project marks their third year of working with Ballou who has mixed everything they’ve released since their 2020 EP, HOLD ON TO YOURSELF.
