Honesty Achieves Unity From One Song To The Next

By: Bret of Frenship

“Carpet” was unique to us in that it started completely “off the grid” meaning nothing was quantized to a bpm. James came up with the first half of the chorus and the drum groove on his own. It’s pretty common for us to start a song separately. The concept for “Carpet” was very much based on an experience and emotion that James had that I was able to latch onto. While James’ start seemed to come pretty quickly, the rest of the song took a long time and quite a few rounds of rewrites. We craved different chords for the verses. We tried a lot of different sounds and progressions but eventually what we landed on ended up being more of a riff than a chord structure.

Another unique characteristic of “Carpet” is that while it sounded different than some of our other songs, it was still obvious that it was one we should keep for ourselves (vs. pitch to other artists). In a way, I think it helped make better sense of some of our other songs living together. This EP, being our first “body of work”, has a wide range of sounds and influences, which can certainly make it more difficult to define a “recognizable sound” for the project. We’ve found that if we’re consistently being as honest as possible it’s much easier to achieve unity from one song to the next.


​Los Angeles duo FRENSHIP avoids sonic lanes with a distinctive blend of island-tinged, breathe of fresh air dance-pop all their own. The twosome, comprised of James Sunderland and Brett Hite, first met while selling spandex at Lululemon, a gig that helped fund their individual musical pursuits. The experience inspired and nurtured their deep creative union, as they eventually came together during nights to craft the music that would become FRENSHIP. Now, the duo is ready to export their soothing, uplifting, hands-in-the-air sound to the mainstream, by way of their debut EP launching this spring. Their latest single Capsize features vocalist Emily Warren of Prescription Songs.