Feminism and The Smiths rule high with The Fridays

“We actually never got around to playing covers, mainly because we couldn't,” muses Ashraff Jamil (or Acap), frontman of Malaysian band The Fridays, with an audible smile. This self-deprecating tone permeating our interview is characteristic of a band that once described its output as “bad pop music played by easily satisfied simpletons”. Talk about harsh.

A chance meeting between Acap, Yan (guitarist) and Chey (drummer) at SMK Bukit Indah, Ampang in 1999 formed the core of the punk-informed outfit that would remain unnamed until 2003. Theirs is a kaleidoscopic world brazenly referencing an Edie Sedgwick aesthetic here and a Johnny Marr inflection there–sans the uncoordinated ignominy of a stuttering debutante. The music is, at turns, sarcastic and cultivated; if slightly proletariat in lyricism and possessing a rather kooky sonic palette. “It is mainly a mixture of punk rock and various great frontwomen,” offers Acap. “I’d always liked Natalie Merchant, riot grrl bands, Everything But the Girl and The Kabeedies. [So] The band has always had this tinge of femininity,” opines Acap.

Feminism is a recurrent theme in The Fridays’ tracks–with ‘Hit Her’ (a reference to domestic abuse) and ‘Stars Hollow’ being two salient examples. They are not adverse to flounce down more familiar pop offerings though.  ‘My Blur Baby’, for example, tacks a vivacious “la-la-la” at the refrain to catalyse an already decent hook. That aside, it was the band’s devotion to The Smiths that boosted the primacy of the subtle 80s subtext into their songs. “Each and every one of us has held that band very close to our hearts at one point or another,” remarks Acap, the primary lyricist and occasional guitarist. “Us” here also alludes  to Wan the secondary guitarist, Said HerrDirektor the keyboardist and Adib holding down the low end.

Classic, outright disillusionment with the scene might have contributed to the band’s self-imposed hiatus for the better part of 2008. That does not discount their prolific and prodigious output though–four EPs since 2005, all of which are downloadable FOC on their MySpace page. In fact, they’ve just wrapped the recording of their latest EP, slated for release this month.

Sticking out like a bulbous middle finger, the band’s regular excursions into untrammelled pop-smithery ensured a growing cult following–having found allies in Joe Kidd of Carburetor Dung and Siang (Umbrella Records exec)–who drolly christened them “the next OAG”. With local organisers thus apprised, these stamps of approval by the grizzled, rock’s elder statesmen has led to ever higher profile gigs–including an opening slot for Indonesian swing band Mocca and a plum slot on MTV Asia.

Compounding this is Acap’s lucid enunciation and sinuous word play–a rarity amongst English-speaking Malaysian bands prone to masticating their lines. “Prosthetic hearts in smithereens/Living this life through magazines/Take off those dancing shoes and scream/Talk is too cheap” laments Acap on ‘Pretty Faces’. To wit, their own ironic admission as “the independent scene’s best kept secret” seems oddly apropos. And it is not just thrasonical. Smart, raucous, pithy and cerebral, The Fridays are the post-modern, thinking layman’s (or Pitchfork-ingesting, college-aged music snob’s) glee pop.

WORDS JARROD PHOTO THE FRIDAYS
www.myspace.com/fantasticfridays