Manifest!

Two effervescent singles last year – Friend Crush and I'm His Girl started the chatter about the Brooklyn five-piece Friends. With strikingly "cool" videos and sleeve art, married to a pick'n'mix approach to New York's musical history – some girl group here, some early hip-hop there, some punk-funk round the corner – they seemed like nothing so much as a tumblr account given musical form. The highlights of their first album, sadly, are still those two singles, and there are some missteps here. The reverb-heavy, lo-fi production deadens things, and – as is ever the case with indie rhythm sections – the funk is as approximate as it is charming. Still, in Ideas on Ghosts and Va Fan Gör Du, they show they can hit the target. The former would have been ruined with a big production, reduced to icy bluster – instead its waves of synths are softened and mellowed. There are summer indie-disco hits here, for sure; there's enough to hint there might be more than that.