Premiere: Ike Reilly entreats an ex-lover, ‘Don’t Turn Your Back on Friday Night’

We all live for Friday nights. It’s the one day of the week that makes the other six kinda bearable. We let go of work stress in favor of escaping into a vice or two. Even if our personal lives are collapsing down around us, there remains a certain cathartic freedom in chilling out to some records. The narrator of Ike Reilly‘s new song “Don’t Turn Your Back on Friday Night,” premiering today, relinquishes both personal and professional pressures in favor of getting a little high. Despite his now-ex-girlfriend readying to move on and move out, he implores her to stop for a second and bask in one last good time. “Unlike the wealthy, middle class and poorer couples that are breaking up often have to stay in the same house or apartment until there is enough scratch for one of them to get out,” the indie-rocker tells B-Sides & Badlands about the song, officially out tomorrow (April 27).

Given his dire circumstances, there is a considerable, heart-dragging weight that looms over the entire evening. But he pushes through it anyway. “It’s Friday night, I hope somebody comes by to get us high now,” he puffs, a cloud of swirling guitar wafting through the arrangement. His eyes are hazy, but his heart swells to the brink of exploding. “Friday nights can be tough, as that evening is a natural celebration of ‘being done with a shit week of work,'” he continues. The song’s central character puts all his cards on the table. He’s “simply asking his soon-to-be-ex-lover to hang out, let a few friends stop by in the form of familiar songs and maybe have a few drinks and smoke a little weed,” Reilly says. “He’s resigned himself to the fact that she’s leaving; he just doesn’t want either of them to give up on the pleasure of Friday night.”

That soothing pleasure penetrates the production, illustrated through the languid, groovy melody adorned with acoustic guitar and Reilly’s unhurried, mellowing vocals. “I’ve been told by my bandmates that this is one of the most ‘poppy’ ⎯⎯ as in ‘pop song’ ⎯⎯ songs I’ve ever done. Not sure about that, but it’s got a chorus that people sang along to the first time I ever played it, so either I  stole it or somebody has been tipping off audiences,” he quips.