It's a flammable affair

Can we take it that Friendly Fires are looking to move decisively away from the world of indie?

“I guess so,” considers Ed Gibson. “To me, the world of indie conjures up images of Liam and Noel arm-in-arm, staring down the camera. It doesn’t really feel like a world we were ever part of. With the first album, we were more influenced by DFA records and that kind of sound, which to me wasn’t indie either, it was New York disco. To us, ‘indie’ was a bit of a dirty word, which we never wanted to be exclusively a part of.”
So are Bobby Brown and NKOTB genuine influences or were they just thrown out there to get people talking?
“They’re definitely where we’ve taken some influence from,” replies Edd. “Maybe Bobby Brown a little more than, what was the other one – N*Sync or somebody?”
New Kids On The Block.
“Maybe less New Kids,” responds Edd, a tad sheepishly. “That’s sort of a way of talking about vocals with a pop sensibility. There are songs where, when we wrote them, we thought, ‘Does this sound too pop?’ Then we thought, ‘Well, every time we’re asked we say we’re a pop band, so let’s just push this forward and see how it goes.’ I’m really pleased that we did. ‘Show Me Lights’ in particular, we thought, ‘Christ, this is getting out of hand, isn’t it?’ But we totally embraced it.”
So might we soon see Friendly Fires’ singer, Ed MacFarlane, wearing a headset microphone à la Bobby Brown in the ‘My Prerogative’ video?
“Yeah, or like Britney,” chuckles Edd. “You need to get both arms going – you can’t have one impeded by a stupid microphone!”
Given the psychedelic nature of the artwork on Pala, the euphoric feel of the music, and the fact that the lead single off the album, ‘Live Those Days Tonight’, boasts a video compiled from vintage rave clips, I wonder if Edd considers it to be a drug album?
“It’s far more instant than that,” reckons Edd. “A good drug album would be non-stop, there’d be no let-up to come to at all. You definitely need sections to go on and on to lose yourself in, whereas we don’t like to waste too much time, we try and trim off the fat. You’d have a tough time taking drugs to this record.”
As well as finishing work on the excellent Pala, recent times have found FF embarking on some interesting extracurricular activities, including compiling a superb mix album, Suck My Deck, for the always enjoyable Bugged Out series. When I mention that Suck My Deck starts with the exact same track (The Egyptian Lover’s ‘Freakaholic’) as a different Andrew Weatherall mix album, Edd reveals that the band have been collaborating with the legendary Screamadelica producer.
“He was someone we were desperate to work with,” notes Edd. “We’ve been sending things back and forth, but lately he’s got busy with Primal Scream doing Screamadelica live, so there’s nothing finished yet. We’ve also been working on some stuff with Michael Mayer from the Kompakt label. Now that the album’s finished, the pressure is off a little bit and we’re freer to experiment.”
Perhaps FF can have a backstage natter with Weatherall at Oxegen – both Friendly Fires and Primal Scream are playing on the same day. Last year Friendly Fires also contributed a wonderful cover of Depeche Mode’s ‘Strangelove’ to a Gucci advert directed by Frank Miller, the comic book guru turned film-maker famed for creating 300 and Sin City.
“We’re big admirers of Frank Miller’s work,” says Edd. “Over his political views, which I understand are fairly right wing at times. Anyway, they wanted us to cover a Depeche Mode song, which I’d never heard before actually. I like Depeche Mode but I wasn’t aware of ‘Strangelove’. Still, we took a listen and thought we could do something with it. We were very proud to be mixing with names like Frank Miller, Gucci and Depeche Mode.”
Would the band consider themselves to be Gucci men?
“I wouldn’t consider myself a Gucci man, but I’ve got a lot of respect for that house,” replies Edd. “The fragrance also smelled pretty damn nice as well – it would have been awful if we’d soundtracked the aroma of manure or something!”

Pala is out now on XL. Friendly Fires play Oxegen on the Sunday.