The men behind the fire

In a luxury suite in the Morrison Hotel, the lady from the record company is trying not to confuse herself. “Ed and Ed,” she says. “Say hello to Ed.”

The first two Eds are Messrs MacFarlane and Gibson, frontman and drummer with perpetually buzzy dance trio Friendly Fires. They’re in Dublin to play at the high-society barf-a-palooza that is the Trinity Ball and, having scored an upgrade to the penthouse, are in good spirits. As they’re not due on for hours there’s plenty of time to kick back, chug a few frosty ones and discuss the future.
“We’re meeting Andrew Weatherall next week and I’m a bit nervous to be honest,” confesses MacFarlane, settling into a nook by his bling-tastic king-size. “We’ve already done a track with him. It’s an eight-minute piece inspired by Krautrock. He plays guitar on it. We sent it to him and he put all this amazing stuff on it.”
It’s been a tumultuous 12 months for the group. Second album Pala was a huge hit, confirming the promise of their debut, Friendly Fires. But success was tinged with tragedy. In September the group’s touring drummer and friend Richard Turner died after suffering a heart attack. He was 27 and took ill while swimming.
“It was a real shock,” Turner recalls looking visibly shaken. “Richard was an incredibly talented musician. He was also a promoter of jazz nights in London. But he wasn’t simply a jazz head. He was into avant garde music, the stuff that we listened to as a band. It was a real shock. We miss him.”
Three well-brought-up middle-class kids from the London commuter town of St. Albans, it’s hard to imagine Friendly Fires courting controversy. However they kicked up rather a stink in the UK last summer with the claim that they’d rather listen to Justin Timberlake than The Smiths. The quote was taken out of context and blown up, feels MacFarlane. For all that, he stands by his point: great pop music shouldn’t be regarded as a guilty pleasure or appreciated with ironic air quotes – you should like it because it’s good, not “good”.
Despite the success of Pala, MacFarlane doesn’t envisage working again with that record’s producer Paul Epworth. The man with the certifiable golden touch, Epworth has midwifed gazillion-selling albums by Adele and Florence + The Machine. Nonetheless Friendly Fires are of the opinion they’ve taken their relationship as far as they can – and suspects Epworth may feel the same.
“It has to be difficult for him to work a band like us,” says Ed. “We record and write a lot of the music before we go into the studio. When a band is precious about their stuff – if someone else tries to have creative input, it can be two forces pulling in opposite directions. Paul is very good at what he does. He knows how to write interesting pop music. He has never strayed into the realm of stuff that isn’t going to appeal to the mainstream. That’s why we wanted to work with him in the first place.”
MacFarlane has a strong opinion on the direction modern dance is taking. It strikes him as funny that genres such as dubstep see themselves as cutting edge when often they’re simply repackaging old ideas.
“I always found it really amusing how drum ‘n’ bass thought it was futuristic and arty in the ‘90s – having a robot spider on the cover. Really dated stuff like that. I’m not a massive fan... what would you call it, aggressive dubstep? I remember the first dubstep record I heard was Midnight Request Line by Skream. I could really get into that. I feel some of the stuff at the moment isn’t very good.”