Friendly Fires

A trio of close companions from childhood established Friendly Fires during the mid-2000s by fusing the soaring refrains and emotive tunes of indie rock and shoegaze with the driving rhythms of dance music. That stylistic blend came across as forward-looking on the 2008 album Friendly Fires and on Pala in 2011, while later singles and releases from the group illustrated the deepening overlap between indie and dance spheres as the 2010s drew to an end.

The three musicians, who grew up in St. Albans in Hertfordshire, England, first connected at St. Albans School. In their early teenage years they started the post-hardcore outfit First Day Back, which continued until the friends headed off to university. At that point vocalist/keyboardist Ed Macfarlane, guitarist Edd Gibson, and drummer Jack Savidge shifted direction to match their expanding interest in dance music; during the same period Macfarlane also produced and issued his own electronic material on Manchester’s Skam Records. Drawing from Prince, Carl Craig, and the catalog of Kompakt Records, the three renamed themselves Friendly Fires.

After building an audience through live performances, they issued the Photobooth EP on the independent label People in the Sky at the end of 2006. The small initial pressing sold out rapidly, and continued demand led to a second pressing before their next EP, Cross the Line, arrived in the middle of 2007. Moshi Moshi Records then released the single “Paris” b/w “Ex-Lover” that October. A stylish video directed by Price James together with strong critical response turned “Paris” into a hit and earned the band an opening slot on Interpol’s U.K. tour. XL Recordings, one of England’s largest and most prominent independent labels, offered a recording contract, resulting in the self-titled Friendly Fires album later that year, which yielded the singles “Skeleton Boy” and “Jump in the Pool.” A deluxe edition containing previously unreleased tracks followed in 2009, and Friendly Fires received double-gold certification in the U.K. soon after its Mercury Music Prize nomination that July.

In 2010 the group shared a split single with Holy Ghost!, covering Holy Ghost!’s “Hold On” while Holy Ghost! reworked Friendly Fires’ “On Board.” Co-producers Paul Epworth and Chris Zane joined the band for the 2011 follow-up Pala, lending greater scale and refinement to the sound. After extensive touring in support of that album, Friendly Fires entered a period of inactivity. During the break Macfarlane guested on Disclosure’s track “Defeated No More,” which appeared on the duo’s 2013 debut Settle. Macfarlane and Gibson also worked with Jon Brooks of the Advisory Circle under the name the Pattern Forms, releasing the experimental electropop album Peel Away the Ivy in October 2016. Friendly Fires resumed activity in 2018 with live shows and two singles, the tropical-pop-leaning “Love Like Waves” and the Disclosure-produced “Heaven Let Me In.” Their third album, Inflorescent, appeared in 2019.