Friendly Fires

King Tut’s, Glasgow, Tue 30 Sep

ELECTRO SHOEGAZE

It’s quite probable that pens and keyboard fingers across the land have been itching to write/type the phrase ‘new wave of new rave’ for at least a year now, so might The List endeavour to jump in before anyone else gets there. No-one can blame us really, because Friendly Fires are the first band to inspire a real belief that the scene might just throw up a band who can go on to enduring success, rather than reinforce the sneaking suspicion that Klaxons will remain forever the sound of 2007.

Not that you’ll catch St. Albans’ Friendly Fires describing themselves as new rave. The trio’s music is a gloriously scene-transcending combination of classic guitar-pop song writing and dancefloor-ready electronic rhythms, with the stunning singles ‘Paris’ and ‘Jump in the Pool’ surely already embedded in the hearts of those who have heard them. ‘I think we share a subversive pop philosophy with a lot of other current bands,’ says FF’s Jack Savidge, whose first group, with bandmates Ed Macfarlane and Edd Gibson, was a hardcore outfit they formed a decade ago at high school.

‘I’m thinking of people like Metronomy, Foals, Late of the Pier,’ he says, ‘but then, we don’t have much in common with them sonically. It’s more about a shared belief in taking influences from really out-there places and moulding them into a pop format. When we started out we were listening to My Bloody Valentine and drone-rockers like The Boredoms, and also a lot of dance music and disco. So it became a challenge to try and meld those all together.’ Pop music, frankly, can never have enough bands who are willing to take on a challenge like that.

More: Music, Previews (Music), Ed MacFarlane, Edd Gibson, Electro, Friendly Fires, Jack Savidge

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