Welcome back to Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions. This week on the show, Dan Wriggins of the Philly band Friendship. Earlier this year, the band released its fifth album, Caveman Wakes Up. Fans of the roots-informed indie rock of Wednesday and MJ Lenderman—frequent collaborators with Friendship—will find plenty of busted and bruised glory in these songs, which fall on the shaggy end of the alt-country spectrum. But for us, it’s Wriggins’ wry and sly lyrics that really seal the deal. Take “All Over the World,” in which a landscaper experiences “the beating heart of God/ laying down a roll of sod.”

That down in the dirt realness is what makes Caveman Wakes Up so captivating, and what earned it a spot on the Aquarium Drunkard mid-year review list, where we noted: 

“Friendship’s second release for Merge Records is an unhurried, mostly quiet, slow burn of a record, sustained by Dan Wriggins’ delivery and vocal tone and the band’s splendid musical accompaniment that’s hard to keep off the stereo…[it] contains many immediate classics — “Betty Ford, “Free Association,” “Hollow Skulls,” “Love Vape,” “Resident Evil” — that are filled with lyrical gems that leave you conflicted as to which should get tattooed on your body. Breakout album alert!” 

This week on the show, Wriggins joins us for a gentle ramble focused mostly on poetry, specifically, one of our shared favorite poets, the great James Tate. When Dan’s not putting out records with Friendship and under his own name, he writes poetry. His debut book of poems is called Prince of Grass, and was released in the summer of 2024. We get into it all, and more—this week on Transmissions. 

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