Neil Friedlander: The Change

Singer-songwriter Neil Friedlander steps into a new era with The Change, a 12-track album that channels growth, sobriety, and self-realization into lush, heartfelt indie-pop. Known for his poetic lyricism and dreamlike soundscapes, Friedlander merges memory and present day, dream and waking life, crafting songs that are intimate, vulnerable, and emotionally precise. Recorded with Brooklyn-based producer Chris Camilleri (John Legend, Barns Courtney, Lennon Stella), The Change blends 90s and early-2000s indie influences with modern production, reflecting a period of profound personal transformation, meditation, and creative exploration.

1. The Change is described as your most intimate and emotionally honest work to date. What shifted—personally or creatively—that made you feel ready to be this open on a record?

It’s a hard question to answer, since these changes were not occurring consciously. I think it was a gradual shift - from writing from a place of seeking validation - to writing from a place of honesty. Over time it just became easier to focus on what needed to be said - what my body was trying to expel, put bluntly. In a way it was a gift of desperation (which is also a nice abbreviation for GOD) - because I just had to get some of this stuff out.

2. You’ve spoken about sobriety, therapy, and inner work shaping this album. How did those experiences change not just what you wrote about, but how you approached songwriting?

What these experiences did to me as a songwriter, at least on this album, was freed me of the expectations and demands made on my songs being considered “pop music”. I wanted the songs to work of course, as songs, but I was not treating them as songs at all. I trusted my body’s musical mechanism to turn them into songs, to infuse them with a melody that made sense. But the how here was indeed significant: Really what I was doing was writing poems and letters, and each had an aim, an exploration of some hidden room in my mind. The goal was to understand, most of the time.

3. During the pandemic you trained in the Meisner acting technique. How did that process influence your emotional presence or storytelling in these songs?

The Meisner Method is a beautiful acting technique, and I feel so enriched by having gone through that training. In Meisner, there’s a famous exercise called “Repetition” - where you repeat statements back and forth between acting partners, keeping the statements true. The goal is to stay in connection with the other person, and express fully and clearly how you are feeling in relation to them, how they are affecting you. It’s a great exercise in honest communication. And - just as an example - I remember that when I first did it, I was afraid of my own natural responses - of saying exactly the thing that comes to my mind. We’re very conditioned to control certain of our responses. It helped me realize it’s really ok to just trust myself. That often the things that you’re afraid of saying are the exact things that people feel really seen by and love you for. Also, the last song on the album, “Committed”, was written through the eyes of a character in a play I wrote. Playwriting specifically has given me much more structure and sense of narrative, whereas my poetic mind often feels a bit detached from the physical world.

4. The album moves between memory and the present, dream and waking life. How intentional was that blurred line, and what does it allow you to express that a more literal approach might not?

The blurred line was not really intentional - it is very much the product of how my brain works. As a young child I was obsessed with fantasy - and I’d say that that kind of thinking - abstract, somewhere in a dream - definitely affects my writing. I really am up in the clouds a lot of the time! At the same time, there are definite moments of reality and landing - I love for example that the song “Future Life”, which is for the most part a pretty floaty and abstract love letter and goodbye song, mostly speaking in metaphor (“Your face is on a postcard that I buried in the snow”, for example), also has the line “even though you’re blocked on Instagram and I// pretend I don’t give a damn// I do”. Because that really is how I experience life - through a poetic lens, but trying to also be in the here and now. To your question, what this allows me to express is how I experience life.

5. Working with Chris Camilleri brought a lush, modern indie-pop sound to very personal material. How did you balance rich production with the vulnerability at the core of these songs?

This is all to Chris’ credit. Chris is an excellent listener, and always has great instincts about how a song should feel. Throughout the album, he consistently constructed productions that house the songs in a really balanced way - arrangements that neither overpower the lyrics nor allow them to be overdramatized. We always wanted the words and vocals to be honored, but not to be the sole focus or only interesting aspect of a track; and I’d say the main theme was subtlety. I’m very grateful to him - and could not have entrusted these songs to more capable hands.