Brighton, England’s Fickle Friends choose pop happiness on their effervescantly hooky 2025 eponymous third album. The album arrives almost five years after Are We Gonna Be Alright?, a period that found singer Natassja Shiner and her bandmates going on a two year hiatus to recoup from touring and reconnect with their passion for making music. The time away seems to have proven fruitful and Fickle Friends once again reveal themselves as one of the sweetest sounding bands you might not have heard of.
Self-produced, the album feels at once lighter than past albums, and yet full of serious emotional weight as Shiner takes a deep look inside herself, unpacking her anxiety and fear in ways that seem nakedly raw. It’s feeling of speaking…