Friko at Fine Line (05-22-2025)

Downtown was quiet with no ravenous sports fans or torrential rain filling the streets. In fact, it was a perfect night to stroll to a venue. Even better was the casual scene at the velvet rope as the person in front of me and a Fine Line staffer shared a bonding moment for the patron wore a baseball cap with Snoopy donning headphones and the staffer sported a Snoopy flying ace tattoo on his left arm.

Snoopy has found much love with the Gen Z generation and it was a young crowd that waited for one of the hottest bands out of Chicago to take the stage.

youbet opened the evening with a tight, muscular set. It is a band from Brooklyn, a musical project from Nick Llobet, the name of the band a play on his last name.

Llobet grew up in southern Florida and learned to play classical, blues, rock and flamenco on guitar. The music from their latest release Way to Be is decidedly off-kilter, kinetic and fuzzy, the best of qualities you can find in a garage band.

Llobet did not speak much between songs, but the bassist, Micah Prussack, jumped in a few times to say how much they loved coming to Minneapolis, and that there was a fun story to be told about their last show here. Llobet tried to shut down the thread, but then laughed and said they would tell a story to anyone who bought $100.00 of merch after their set.

After an intermission that played great music like “Get Innocuous!” by LCD Soundsystem and “Barley” from Water From Your Eyes, Friko took the stage to The Talking Heads “Once in a Lifetime.” From there was a spine-tingling beginning in which lead singer, Niko Kapetan, tried to fit the whole evening into “Guess”. From there, the band dialed it up even more to where it looked like they were almost assaulting their instruments during “Chemical”.

We last saw Friko opening up for Royel Otis at First Ave in Sep, 2024. We mentioned that they are known for their high-energy live shows, and I was getting a front row view, but there were moments when they took a step back and played the sweetest of songs like “For Ella” and “Cardinal”.

In a Paste profile on their debut album Where We’ve Been, Where We Go from Here, the band noted not only being inspired by the Chicago indie rock scene, but also influenced by the classical romantic era, specifically the music of Frederic Chopin. As drummer Bailey Minzenberger stated: “With Chopin’s Nocturnes specifically, I can’t wrap my head around how something can be so beautiful. There are some bits of it that are so complicated but still really accessible.”

You would think that the two musical genres are incompatible, but even with youth on their side, I don’t think Friko could go the whole night into a hypersonic screed. [Kapetan was a pool of sweat by the first song.] Perhaps a respite was needed. In fact at the encore Kapetan asked the crowd if they wanted an energetic or gentle song to finish. The crowd was on the gentle side, but were overruled for Friko still had plenty in the tank.