Review: Maybe This Place Is The Same And We’re Just Changing by Real Friends

Review By Emily Racanelli

Real Solace in Real Friends

Music is supposed to make you feel something. Whether it’s opening up that crevice in your chest, bringing out those tears you’ve been holding back for weeks, or reassuring you that this bad day will end and tomorrow will be better, music does it all. The debut full-length album Maybe This Place Is The Same And We’re Just Changing by Illinois sad boys Real Friends accomplishes all of these aforementioned things. The 32 minutes are filled with quick drum fills, catchy riffs, mosh-worthy breakdowns, and lyrics that will cut through whatever wall you have put up around yourself.

For those lyrics that are reminiscent of a 2004 Fall Out Boy, you can thank bassist Kyle Fasel. A spoken word poet, he channels every type of inner pain--loneliness? check! broken heart? check!--and turns it into something you can scream about when life get you down. He then passes the lyrics off to frontman Dan Lambton, who puts the unrhymed phrases into a melody. Given the amount of passion that Lambton sings/screams with, it’s hard to believe he didn’t write every single word.

The best example of this would be the sans-guitar track “Sixteen.” Channeling that empty feeling most teens are left with, every single line contains a phrase that is sure to bring back all those memories of youth. Whether you are indeed sixteen or thirty-six, we can all relate to the lines, “I walk away from anyone that cares about me/But I swear, my skin’s not as rough as I make it out to be.” As if hearing those words over and over again isn’t enough--because I’m sure, like me, you have this song on repeat every Sunday night--the recently released music video takes it to another dimension. Bringing the lyrics to life, it repeatedly zooms in on Lambton’s melancholic face as he watches over a sixteen-year-old boy who struggles to build connections with people. After seeing that, all I want to do is drown out my sorrows with the T.V. Guess what? Real Friends has a song about that too!

Introducing my personal favorite on the record, “To: My Old Self.” No matter how far we have come in life, there will always be lingering thoughts about the person we were. A certain smell, word, picture, etc. might bring us back to those days when all we wanted was to be free of the weight that broke us down on bathroom floors. It’s certainly easy to find solace in a song that lets you know you aren’t alone in what you felt. Behind a subtle harmonic choir and riff, the chorus goes “I sleep with the TV on, it covers up my feelings about the past/Here I am lying awake thinking about how things used to be.” The first time I heard this song I was in my car, and I literally had to pull over and play it back, because no words have ever been truer to the way I was living my life. There’s definitely some comfort in knowing I’m not the only one who needs to cancel out silence. Crash cymbals ring in and the bass notes echo like a pounding in you chest until the end. The most heart-wrenching part, Lambton harmonizes with himself. His quiet sadness stays in the background while he screams “Doubt is the soil that fear grows in/I’m dirty from head to toe.”

From loneliness to drowning yourself in the dirt of the past, it’s time reassure you that Real Friends isn’t entirely depressing. “I Don’t Love You Anymore” is the perfect mosh-worthy, angsty anthem that is sure to get you through even the nastiest breakup. A song that, if slowed down, would have a Mayday Parade-esq break up vibe, it choses not to sulk in what was, but to just be angry about it. (I guess neither sadness nor aggression are technically good emotions, but I’d pick the latter if I had to). It opens with a drum roll, crescendoing to Lambton’s scratchy voice angrily ranting about a past love. Once again, there isn’t a lyric out of place. In traditional sad boys fashion, every word holds a meaning and when the chorus rings in, it’ll hit hard. The music amps up while Lambton sings, “No matter how bad I want you in my bed/I know that you found somebody else to be there for you.” Imagine how good it feels to scream this at the top of your lungs at a concert. It’s probably the most cathartic thing in the world, and that’s what makes Real Friends such a unique band.

We don’t listen to sad music just to feel sad. It isn’t about sinking lower into your thoughts and simultaneously slitting your wrists. It’s about being able to let go of everything that’s trapped beneath the surface and realize that you are never alone in it. Cry it out, mosh it out, scream it out; however you do it, I promise this album will make you feel better. If you’re young and angsty, you might still have that inner sadness. But there will come a day when you’re sitting in your car at twenty-five listening to these same songs, and the lyrics won’t break through. Not because they don’t mean anything, but because you got better. Real Friends always say this but it doesn’t mean anything until then: “Today’s a great day.”

You can catch Real Friends on The AP Tour this fall with As It Is, This Wild Life, and Mayday Parade. See them while you can, as the guys will then return to writing their second full-length album!