Friedberg
Friedberg announce second album, Goodwife, for release on 9 April 2027 via Clouds Hill, and share title track & film.
Friedberg, the London-based collective formed by the Austrian-born Anna Friedberg, today announce their irrepressible second album, Goodwife, for release on 9 April 2027 via Clouds Hill.
Co-produced by Anna, German composer and dance musician Daniel Brandt and Oli Bayston (aka Boxed In), the record bursts with the spirit of collaboration and live performance.
Goodwife might ring with the playful, irreverent spirit of nights spent on the dancefloor, but at its heart lies a story that fights for that level of freedom.
Anna Friedberg (writer, vocals, guitar, percussion, cowbells) remembers her grandmother as
“a really strong woman. She lived in the countryside her whole life, but she was very smart and read lots of books and learnt French in her 70’s and was into poetry,”
she smiles.
Tied to a husband who “couldn’t handle her having a life outside of him”, however, she found herself stuck in an abusive marriage. On Goodwife’s title track, replete with cheeky nods to Inner City’s 1988 banger “Good Life” and shared today as the album’s first single, Anna imagines a way to “rewrite her past” and give her a new ending.
“To me, this new ‘Goodwife’ is leaving co-dependency behind and being good to herself rather than to everyone else. A message that feels, sadly, more urgent than ever given everything happening in the world right now around women's safety and autonomy.”
she says,
The track was co-produced by Anna Friedberg with Daniel Brandt and Hot Chip’s Al Doyle and Joe Goddard in their Shoreditch studio.
“We were just jamming on all their amazing synthesisers, it was so much fun, One of my favourite memories from the whole album is standing on Hot Chip's studio dancefloor, margarita in hand, listening back to our tracks at an abnormally loud volume.”
Anna recalls.
The Goodwife visual campaign centres on a seven-minute short film - a single-studio meta-artwork made of seven interconnected performance chapters, one per album single. Inspired by Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense and the DIY spirit of 80s alternative music videos, all crew, cameras and equipment stay fully visible throughout: four camera operators - who are also dancers - track the band in plain sight, while set, lighting, styling and makeup changes happen live, on camera.
There are no extras and no hidden setups, just scripted moments of spontaneity, like a crew member suddenly pulled into frame. Each chapter carries its own distinct world, together forming one fluid narrative - and doubling as both the full-length film and seven standalone one-minute promo clips.
Anna and bandmate Daniel wrote the script themselves, shooting the whole thing in a single day with director Wouter Stoter, who they say was "crazy enough" to take it on.
Though “Goodwife” is the record’s emotional core, there’s a joie de vivre to its intentions that rings throughout the whole album. Following their critically acclaimed 2024 debut, Hardcore Workout Queen, Friedberg have allowed their priorities to take an exuberant left turn. Where guitars and indie-minded sensibilities previously took charge, now Anna and her Friedberg Collective - formed by several London-based musicians including Daniel Brandt, Cheryl Pinero, Hannah Feenstra, Emily Linden, Matthias Biermann and Fifi Dewey - want to make you dance.
“I always feel like there's these two sides of me, and on this record I wanted to pursue the more dancey and energetic side,”
Anna enthuses.
The insatiable, groove-based evolution of Friedberg can be traced through three hugely influential forebears whose fingerprints are all over Goodwife. First came the experience of seeing cult New York group ESG live at London’s Jazz Cafe and witnessing how they could create maximal energy with minimal ingredients.
“They only had bass, drums, percussion and vocals. There were no harmony instruments and no chords, but the whole crowd was dancing, It was so groovy, you couldn't escape it. That was definitely a moment that changed something.”
Anna remembers.
Then, following the release of their debut, Friedberg got the golden ticket call from James Murphy, asking them to support LCD Soundsystem at their 2025 Brixton Academy residency.
“I met him once before and we spoke a lot about tennis and cowbells, so maybe he remembered me as a fellow enthusiast,”
Anna chuckles. Lifelong fans of Murphy and co, their approach cemented how Anna wanted to tackle Friedberg’s own work.
“There’s so much effort and detail in their music, and then they’ll have a synth that comes in way too loud but is so amazing,”
she smiles.
“It’s so detail-oriented and extreme but they make everyone dance.”
LCD weren’t the first seminal group to take Friedberg under their wing. As Covid lockdowns came to an end, Hot Chip enlisted the band for a formative US tour. The resulting friendship would eventually see Joe Goddard and Al Doyle co-produce a trio of tracks on Goodwife (“Tomorrow”, “Partymaus” and “Goodwife” itself), inviting Anna to their Shoreditch studio playground and imbuing the creative process with the sense of mischief and excitement that runs throughout the record.
It’s in this exact manner - letting your hair down and shaking it out with your mates - that Goodwife should be enjoyed. The record might open with a winking “procrastination anthem”, but the musical heart of the band’s second LP is all about letting loose in the now.
Where previously, Friedberg spent a long time fiddling with edits, this time they recorded drums, bass and guitars live, drawing from the energy of the stage.
Poetry is another thread running through Goodwife. Many of the songs on the record began life as a poem – a practice Anna traces back to the influence of her grandmother. For years she has written poems and later transformed them into lyrics, though she was once reluctant to call herself a poet.
Alongside Friedberg’s way with an undeniable beat, it makes Goodwife that rarest of things: an album that resists algorithmic pigeonholing, that’s truly fun and intoxicatingly idiosyncratic, with a personality and a heart that shines through in every note. Pour a drink, turn it up loud, and join them on the dancefloor. You only get one life, let’s make it a good one.
