Dance -pop quintet Friends might be the luckiest band in New York. It would seem that Friends hails from a world without the problems that afflict most new groups, a world where crowds dance the moment they hear music and an exploding tour van is a punchline, not an obituary.

According to singer Samantha Urbani, what makes Friends special is not in the things the band does, but how it does them. “I really appreciate the art of the pop song,” she says. “You can take any pop music that’s shitty and plastic and have a real band play it with intuition and passion and make it sound good.“ Still, even the band’s origins seem convenient. Urbani had been experimenting with music, making vocal and drum loop recordings on her computer, until a night in September when her East Williamsburg apartment was crammed with three other musicians. Drummer Oliver Duncan and multiinstrumentalist Lesley Hann had both moved in following a bedbug infestation, and guitarist and keyboardist Matt Molnar, formerly of Soft Black, had listened to Urbani’s demos and wanted to collaborate. That night the quartet jammed for four hours—and repeated the rehearsal every night after that for a week straight. On the seventh day, the band held its first show in Urbani’s backyard.

Initially dubbed Perpetual Crush, the four-piece played the few songs it had come up with that week. “We played what we’d written and then partied for a while.

A few hours later a new group of about 10 people showed up, so we played again,” Urbani says.

Each member of Friends uses the word “organic” to describe the band’s beginning. Urbani explains, “It wasn’t like boot camp—we just had a lot of fun playing together and hanging out.” The band soon added a fifth member, Nikki Shapiro, who had worked with both Molnar and Urbani at Angelica Kitchen. Shapiro added his expertise to the lineup of revolving instrumentalists, giving the band a fuller sound. Molnar, Shapiro and Hann switch between guitars, keys and hand percussion, while Duncan sticks to the drums and Urbani sings. At shows, Urbani’s showmanship, along with the band’s communal and celebratory disposition, proved infectious.

What differentiates Friends from its peers is that tropical-sounding percussion. According to Urbani, music by an African Burundi tribe called Burundi Black greatly influenced the sound. Molnar claims also to have picked up salsa music influences from his Bushwick neighborhood. Either way, the fusion that formed Friends’ Island Pop style struck a chord with local audiences, resulting in shows at nonbackyard venues like Death By Audio and Shea Stadium, as well as interest from record labels. Soon, indie pop act Darwin Deez invited Friends to open on a nationwide tour.

Talking from the road, the band says the shows with Darwin Deez have had the same electricity as gigs back home.

According to Hann, people approach the band after almost every show with the same sentiment: “People have been saying, ‘You guys are going to blow up.’” And they almost did. Driving through Wyoming in a blizzard, the band noticed a cop car flashing its lights and blaring its sirens. Confused, the group pulled over.

“The cop runs up to the window and yells, ‘Everybody out! The vehicle’s on fire!’ We had to run down this snowy ditch on the side of the highway with no time to get our stuff. Then we just stood there watching it all burn for 20 minutes,” Urbani recounts.

Having just filled the gas tank, Friends was positive that the van, and everything inside, would blow up, but a fire truck arrived just in time.

“Now we have these singed instruments that look really cool!” Hann exclaims.

With such enchanted beginnings, it’s as if Friends is somehow immune to the beginner’s problems that afflict its peers, or, you know, other people whose cars catch fire.

“I’ve been in bands where it’s been like that. But with this band it’s different,” says Hann. “Everybody is dedicated to doing whatever we have to do to keep being a band.”

And if that doesn’t catch fire, what can?

–
Friends
Feb. 19
Bowery Ballroom, 6 Delancey St. (betw. Chrystie & Bowery Sts.), 212-533- 2111; 8, $15.

Holding Trevor

Directed by Rosser Goodman





Yet another gay flick, which translates to: yet another turbulent gay romance; yet another supporting gay character who sleeps around too much; yet another fag hag clutching a Cosmo. But in Holding Trevor, there’s a depressed form of anger bubbling beneath the surface. Trevor (screenwriter Brent Gorski) seems incapable of making a decision. His boyfriend Darrell (Christopher Wylie) is a strung-out addict, and while they may have broken up, Trevor remains unable to cut the ties that bind them together—not even when the ER doctor who admits Darrell one night after an overdose turns out to be the hunky Ephram, who pursues Trevor with all the ardency that the sedentary Trevor lacks. Working at an answering service in L.A., and content to come home at night to his roommate Andie (Melissa Searing) and friend Jake (Jay Brannan), Trevor’s life is a study in stasis. He’s even too terrified of change to realize that Andie and Jake operate more as frenemies than as actual friends, never missing an opportunity to undermine him.



Strangely, however, the friendship between Andie, Jake and Trevor is what separates Holding Trevor from the rest of the mediocre gay movie pack. While Ephram and Jake’s rocky relationship is numbingly predictable, Searing, Brannan and Gorski turn their scenes into an uncomfortable concoction of simmering resentments, double-edged teases, and lonely desperation. While Gorski may have intended their banter to be light and fun (which would have resulted in the same strained sense of badinage that envelops every scene between a fag and his hag in low-budget gay indies), the three actors’ flat tones and blunt sense of comedic timing turns their dialogue into painful fights for dominance. Even as Trevor wonders aloud if he should move across the country with Ephram, Jake interrupts to ask if his popsicle turned his tongue blue, which doesn’t come across as a defense mechanism so much as boredom made bitchy.



But while Brannan’s Jake has a few choice lines and a musical career that allows him to sing a semi-applicable song over a montage, it’s Searing’s Andie who turns into a full-fledged monster. When she finds out that she’s HIV-positive during a moral support trip for the slutty Jake, she mutters to her doctor that if anyone should have it, Jake should. Later, she blackmails Trevor into not abandoning their stagnant, repellant life together for the possibility of a healthier one with Ephram by finally coming clean about her status.



And although Ephram is a doctor who says all of the right things at the right time, how can he possibly compete with a house filled with drama, backbiting and bitchiness? He can’t, and so Trevor decides to stay behind to pull his life together. How he’s going to accomplish that with emotional vampires like Jake and Andie sucking the little life force he has running through his veins remains unclear as the final credits roll, but despite Trevor’s hopeful closing monologue, the outcome doesn’t look good. After watching him reject the chance for real happiness again and again over the course of 80-odd minutes, feeling any sort of sympathy or respect for his decision to let Ephram move to New York alone is almost impossible. Especially once Trevor himself admits that other than Andie and Jake, he has no real reason to stay in L.A. Friends may be great,Trev, but an adorable doctor who’s in love with you is in money in the bank.