After listening to The Quiet Part, Loudly for the first time, I couldn’t help but feel that I was in the presence of something unique and special. Since 2023, the queer-inclusive Canadian collective Nameless Friends have been building their own universe, and with this second album they expand it in a way that infects you with brutal intensity and awakens your consciousness.
These glitter-drenched provocateurs transform personal and political devastation into pure, danceable defiance. The Quiet Part, Loudly exudes sensitivity and rawness in equal measure. At the heart of it all is Number One‘s voice, which combines the mystique of Siouxsie Sioux with the electricity of Joan Jett. It has the power to turn you into a performer rather than a mere spectator. As the band themselves say, this album is about doubling down.
The album opens with ‘I’m Afraid of Failure’, a frenetic Celtic punk track — “Great Big Sea on speed”, as the band themselves describe it — built around a vintage accordion purchased in Prince Edward Island and a deliberately out-of-tune trumpet played by someone who hadn’t touched one since the age of 13. The result is gloriously imperfect and bursting with energy, completely impossible to resist.
From there, the album moves with astonishing confidence between very different styles. ‘More’ is furious punk-rock with plenty of fuzz and L7-style energy, a critique of the endless cycle of online attention that hits hard both for its musical rage and the uncomfortably familiar nature of its message. And then comes ‘The Ballad of John Van’ . Ten minutes of rock opera born from a broken-down van at 1am in New Brunswick, dense and dark like a film unfolding through different scenes. The fact that it deals with depression and suicidal thoughts only makes its beauty all the more striking. This is followed by ‘WE HAD A FIGHT’, an instrumental interlude that offers a breather before ‘There’s a rapist in the White House’ bursts in with all the energy of the great protest songs of the 70s, but with a contemporary twist.
The album then takes a turn towards something more intimate. ‘Mary’ opens with a delicate guitar riff that builds into a punk-style outburst, perfectly capturing the moment when repressed emotions break through to the surface. “Lungs” follows hot on its heels as the album’s rawest track: “I am designed to be alive / Sometimes it hurts to be alive”. Two lines that say it all.
What holds it all together is the band’s refusal to separate the political from the personal, and their absolute commitment to creating joyful music. “I refuse to make joyless, preachy music,” says Number One, and this attitude is evident in every track. Here are songs about Canadian genocide, chronic illness, generational trauma, and the all-consuming internet, but they are delivered with an energy that cuts right through you. Sitting somewhere between Patti Smith and Neil Young, Nameless Friends have created an album that doesn’t leave you indifferent, whether because of its enveloping, powerful sound or the honest depth of their message.
And when it’s all over, the album fades into an epilogue of bees, birdsong and whispers, as if after all that noise you need to step outside and be reminded why it’s worth carrying on.
The Quiet Part, Loudly is the kind of album that won’t let you sit still. And, in these times, that’s exactly what we need.
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