King Friday’s music is reminiscent of early Of Montreal or Magnetic Fields recordings: The music is honest, fun, ultra-literate, and the deeper you dig, the better the band’s catalog gets. Paul Simon melodies and Harry Nilsson wails are hiding in these songs’ folds, but there’s also a whimsy here that can’t be faked. In just a few short years, the Seattle-based duo has recorded nine full-length albums worth of material—all of them wonderful, most of them totally unreleased. That’s why Tender Loving Empire will release one King Friday album every few months until every song is out in the world, in the hopes of shedding a little light on these otherwise unheard gems.
