Pop guns blazing

Published on Friday 26 September 2008 19:48

THINGS MUST BE GOING WELL for Friendly Fires. Despite being rained on all weekend at Bestival, despite not playing there themselves or seeing anyone else play, and particularly despite missing their reformed heroes My Bloody Valentine on the Friday night, drummer Jack Savidge, at least, is in a good mood.

"We could hear a whooshing noise in the distance as we were parking the car," he laughs at the memory of MBV, "which I think was the big break at the end of You Made Me Realise, right at the end of the set. That was disappointing."

To be fair, the trio had only arrived back from France on the day, and then had a mountain of PR duties to attend to before they could drive down to the Isle of Wight. But never mind, both bands will hopefully get the chance to share a stage together in future – Friendly Fires, barring acts of God, seem like the kind of group who are around for the long haul.

They seem, moreover, to have struggled inordinately little to get to the position they're in, a minor coup for a trio (Savidge, 24, on drums, Ed MacFarlane, 24, on vocals and Edd Gibson, 23, on guitar) who started out as an unfashionable hardcore punk band while at school with each other in St Albans almost a decade ago. After going their separate ways to university, all three reconnected and formed the soulful, vaguely space-rocking outfit that anyone who has heard them can't help but love.

Considering the short and sharp career curve they've experienced so far, it's a wonder the band have had any time to create a debut album which ranks up there with Hot Chip's latest in the annals of mature, quirky and dancefloor-friendly electronic pop.

"We've been going for about two years," says Savidge, "and as soon as we had a few songs ready we put some up on MySpace. Right away, we had a few people getting in touch. Before we'd even played a gig as Friendly Fires we were having meetings with A&Rs (record company representatives), and it all felt a bit too early, like the hype was getting out of control. But you've got to have a proper public profile online now, as a band, because that's how these people catch on quickly."

Possibly the first place many fans would have heard of Friendly Fires would have been on the NME New Noise Tour in Spring this year, a successful alternative to the usual NME Awards Tour's apparent remit of only featuring obscure flavours of the month and bands who seem destined for overpromotion to the upper echelons of rock. On a tour which also starred the sublime Crystal Castles and the interesting White Lies, however, it seemed that intelligent, slow-burning musical successes might not be such a far-off breed again.

Certainly, to hear the influences which Friendly Fires were bandying about at the time, it comes as a surprise that they ever managed to put together something that would have more than a limited core appeal. "We tried to fuse elements of psychedelic rock and of dance music," says Savidge, "but to ensure our music still had stripped-down pop appeal. At the time we were listening to shoegazers like My Bloody Valentine, drone-rock like Growing and The Boredoms, and then lots of techno and disco. The challenge became to try and meld all of those together with the pop element, although fortunately shoegazer music and dance are really both searching for that same transcendental moment. They both want to take the listener away, they're united in their escapism."

Friendly Fires' limited output so far has nevertheless been first-class in the field of what Savidge loosely terms "that classic pop romance kind of thing". Nowhere is that romance and escapism better exemplified than on the last single, Paris, which merges a breezy, charming type of electronica with MacFarlane's vow that "one day / we'll live / in Paris / I promise".

Its B-side, Ex-Lover, meanwhile, charges along like some dark, Blade Runner-esque approximation of pop, until opening out into the simple, compelling chorus line, "You're all I need". Each song inspires excitement in a club and the kind of pleasure you only associate with a feel-good hit of the summer, as Queens of the Stone Age had it, when it comes on the radio.

To be able to put two such tracks on one single says a lot for the embarrassment of riches at Friendly Fires' disposal.

"So maybe singing about romance isn't all that original," says Savidge, "but there's always something emotionally resonant about it if it's done right. Jump in the Pool is my favourite song from the album. There's just something really, radically different from anything else you'll hear on the radio about it, about the structure, the layered drums and percussion. But at the same time, it just fits so nicely when you listen to it."

He's right, and he's only analysed his third of the song, there. By strange coincidence, or not, Jump in the Pool is also the next single to be released by Friendly Fires, and is as good a place as any to discover possibly the best and most broad-minded British pop band of the year.

&#149 Friendly Fires play King Tut's, Glasgow on 30 September. Their debut album is out now on XL Recordings.