No longer close to Darlington, and feeling that they needed the input of an experienced producer, Friends went back to John Spence and Fairview, and this time asked Spence to produce as well as engineer. The result was Bluishness, recorded in nine days in summer 1992. This was the first CD-only release by the band and the first to feature the characteristic Friends artwork of Martin Parker. One song, Bobby, James And Melanie, a whimsical Jones tribute to three cinematic icons De Niro, Spader and Griffith, had been recorded during the Songs Without Tears sessions and kept in reserve for the next album. Guest appearances included Whirlpool Guest House's Sallyann Davis on backing vocals, and guitarist Steve Skinner, now working with Edwyn Collins, playing on three tracks, most notably a bottleneck guitar solo on blues nightmare number Release Me.

By now the band were releasing an album a year and had given up on singles. The vast majority, around 85%, sold outside the UK and Friends had long since abandoned ambitions for a career as popstars, preferring to get out as much as possible from an enormous repertoire of songs and build up a long-lasting reputation and following as 'serious' musicians.

The same line-up returned to Fairview the following year to record Sundrowned. This took the Bluishness sound to another level again, with Spence still producing, and with a set of rockier and more varied songs, including the wall of noise Get Together, introduced by the wind sound of a whirly 'tune tube' specially researched and bought by the band from Toys 'R' Us during the recording sessions. The enormous length of this album (and of its successor, Folk Songs) was on the rationale that it might be the band's final recording.

The last show featuring the full band was at the Leadmill, Sheffield, on 14 March 1993, where Friends were supporting Sam Brown. Thereafter Jones and Parker developed an acoustic set, with percussion, guitar, vocals and, latterly, additional vocals from Katherine Dow Blyton. A highlight of this period was a poorly attended gig in a cemetery in Sheffield - poorly attended by living people, that is.

Having given up on singles, Friends reverted to the 7" medium in 1994 to give Foreign Money an airing, backed with an acoustic number You Can Do. The duo had recorded this in a day at Fairview in early 1993, along with Hesitant Smile, which later showed up on Folk Songs. Around this time Summerhouse lost its distribution deal with Vital, who had taken on distribution from Red Rhino and latterly Revolver-APT, and Foreign Money and the next album would be export and mail order-only releases.

Martin Parker moved to Edinburgh, and Folk Songs was rehearsed by post and in occasional marathon sessions in Edinburgh and Worksop. The band decided to feature the acoustic side to their work which they had been developing in live performance, and to strip the sound right down to the basics, in some cases just voice and guitar. Folk Songs was recorded in nine days and mixed in three in summer 1995, and released that November. Ranging from one-minute minimalism to the epic nine-minute Visions, the songs are largely acoustic in treatment, with transparent arrangements and an intimate feel. A couple have a fuller band sound, but even rockier numbers like Believe Me have a raw quality in keeping with the rest of the album.

"Folk Songs was a joy to record, except that we ran out of time near the end and had to add a couple of extra days. Kath's singing and the string quartet arrangements added a lot to the songs, and it all came together very quickly. It has some of my favourite songs on it, and it's a style of recording we may return to, or at least mix with a fuller band sound in the future".

The acoustic sound of Folk Songs was previewed in a one-off concert William Jones played in Tokyo with percussionist Masako Ogawa in April 1995, and a short promotional tour in the UK followed at the end of that year, when the album was released. Then everything went quiet for a long time.