FEATURE: Friendly Fires

“Pop music at the moment is awash with really uninspiring Hollywood electro, people like Ke$ha, who just sound stagnant with no soul to it.”

UK indie-dance trio Friendly Fires release their second album, Pala, today. Named after the island in Aldous Huxley’s 1962 novel, Island, the new record combines infectiously uplifting pop melodies with dance beats in a way that’s not too dissimilar too their previous hits, Jump in the Pool and Kiss of Life.

Either way, It helps induce dreams of exotic, faraway locations, but the title track happens to be a sparse and dark ballad — something a bit different for Friendly Fires.

“It’s definitely the slowest song we’ve ever done,” frontman Ed Macfarlane says with a laugh over the phone from his home in St Albans, England. “When we were writing it there was a definite part of our brain that was like ‘Christ, is this the right thing to do?’ But I like the fact the title track is not really representative of our sound, but adds an interesting edge to the record.

“There are lots of wind-up toy sounds being played in the verse. I recorded a camera shutter going off and that makes the rhythm track, so it’s kind of more experimental.”

Mostly written in a garage in their home town, five of the songs were taken to the London studio of producer Paul Epworth, who has previously worked with Bloc Party, Florence and the Machine and Santigold.

“I think what Paul did was pull everything together and make them make sense,” Macfarlane says. “Most of the tracks were already there but were missing that extra something. Just going in and playing the tracks and having him listen to them with fresh ears and ideas was his role, I think.

“For two of the tracks we went to New York and re-recorded the drums on True Love and Running Away on a drum kit that was tuned by Jerry Fuchs, who was the drummer for (Californian dance-punk band) !!!, who sadly passed away last year.

“He’s a drummer we very much admired, so it was an honour to have that drum kit sound on our record. It was fitting we recorded those songs with that kit as well because they have more of a disco edge. When we were there we also recorded some backing vocals for Hurting with the Harlem Gospel Choir, so that was a very special experience.”

Friendly Fires have definitely upped the ante in terms of production on this record and Macfarlane says they tried to make every track have its own unique character.

“I think my favourites are Hawaiian Air, which we mixed the day before we mastered the record, so it was a last-minute thing,” he explains. “The verse has this chopped-up Hawaiian slide guitar and I think that sounds really interesting, and the chorus evokes the feeling of aeroplanes landing in this amazing foreign place.

“I also really like Show Me Lights because it sounds like a boy band almost, like ’N Sync or Backstreet Boys, when hip-hop was pop in the mid-90s. I’m quite nostalgic about that era of pop because there’s a lot more soul to the music.

“Pop music at the moment is awash with really uninspiring Hollywood electro, people like Ke$ha, who just sound stagnant with no soul to it,” Macfarlane says. “Whereas pop music in those days had a lot more groove.”
RACHEL DAVISON

THE PLUG Pala out is out tomorrow. Friendly Fires tour Australia in July.