Friendly Fires

Interview: Friendly Fires plan to get the crowds dancing at RockNess 2012

Ed Macfarlane on festivals, pop music and dancing ‘like an idiot’

28 May 2012

Friendly Fires blur the lines between indie and dance music, so their brand of punk funk should fit in perfectly at RockNess. Hailing from St Albans in Hertfordshire they were nominated for the Mercury Music prize for their debut eponymous album, which…

Friendly Fires confirmed for Big Beach Ball 2012

Mercury Prize winners will headline the new Aberdeen event with DJ set

23 Apr 2012

With only two weeks to go until the inaugural 11-hour Big Beach Ball festival, organisers have announced that Friendly Fires will headline at the Aberdeen Beach Ballroom on Sun 6 May. Fellow musicians Derrick Carter, Heartthrob, Slam, Tiger & Woods…

Tinie Tempah and Skrillex to perform at GlobalGathering

Music Gossip

15 Mar 2012

Tinie Tempah, Chase and Status, Skrillex and Friendly Fires have been confirmed for GlobalGathering 2012. The UK dance festival has announced a huge line up for July 27 and 28, involving artists from many genres of electronic music including Maverick…

The Drums, Friendly Fires, Mystery Jets and Tim Minchin announced for RockNess 2012

The Rapture, Admiral Fallow and Mylo also added to line-up

2 Mar 2012

The Drums, Friendly Fires and Mystery Jets are among the latest batch of bands to be added to the 2012 RockNess line up. Other acts recently added to bill include The View, The Rapture, Mylo, Admiral Fallow, Kassidy, Zane Lowe, Dave Clarke and…

Lana Del Rey joins Lovebox line-up

Music Gossip

1 Mar 2012

Lana Del Rey has joined the Lovebox line-up. The 'Video Games' singer will play on the final night of the annual London festival, which takes place in Victoria Park, east London from June 15 -17. Other acts already announced for the event include…

Friendly Fires - Barrowland, Glasgow, Tue 20 Dec 2011

Triumphant end of year show from the St Albans indie-ravers

6 Jan 2012

2011 didn’t quite belong to Friendly Fires, as some had predicted it might, but they owned significant parts of it off the back of their euphoric second album Pala – not least the flying feet and skyward waving arms of a few summer festival crowds. The…

Edinburgh Hogmanay 2011/2012: Bombay Bicycle Club vs Friendly Fires music quiz

Two great bands - but who has the superior musical knowledge?

19 Dec 2011

As the year draws to a close, two of the UK’s finest indie bands will play as part of Edinburgh’s Hogmanay celebrations. But which of them can boast of superior musical knowledge? Friendly Fires’ Ed Macfarlane and Bombay Bicycle Club’s Jamie MacColl…

Bombay Bicycle Club and Friendly Fires join Primal Scream at Edinburgh's Hogmanay 2012

Mark Ronson and Kassidy also set for New Year in Scottish capital

28 Oct 2011

Bombay Bicycle Club and Friendly Fires have been confirmed as joining Primal Scream on the bill at Edinburgh's Hogmanay 2012. Fresh from their European tour, Bombay Bicycle Club will be performing at the Concert in the Gardens, the music and…

Friendly Fires trumpeter dies

Music Gossip

19 Aug 2011

Friendly Fires trumpet player Richard Turner has died at the age of 27. The musician - who played with the group for three years - suffered a heart attack while swimming at an open air pool at Brockwell Lido in Herne Hill, south London, last Thursday…

T in the Park - Balado, Kinross, Fri 8–Sun 10 July 2011

Beyonce, Pulp, Lady North and Tom Jones among highlights

21 Jul 2011

A city-sized piss-up spread across seven stages, T in the Park has grown to almost incomprehensible proportions. With the territory comes an obligation to please everybody some of the time, something which inevitably has a habit of leaving fans of…

Interview - Friendly Fires ready for summer festivals circuit

UK act take Balearic bliss of second album Pala on the road

27 May 2011

From the sound of their second album Pala, you could easily imagine life in Friendly Fires being a constant summertime carnival. Washes of Balearic blissfulness mingle with Mardi Gras percussion, Ibiza beats and euphoric choruses. The most rapturous…

Sounds of the Summer 2011 Spotify Playlist

The best summer listening, as chosen by List music critics

25 May 2011

The List: Sounds of the Summer Playlist 2011 You've bought your sausages, you've scrubbed your charred old BBQ back to shiny, chrome perfection, and you've invited your most lithe and beautiful friends around to your back garden. Everything's in…

Friendly Fires have similar style to house music

Music Gossip

5 May 2011

Friendly Fires admire the lyrics of house music. The group prefer to write about subjects close to their own hearts, rather than issues in the outside world, and think their approach is similar to that used in dance music. Frontman Ed Macfarlane…

Spotify playlist: T in the Park 2011

Highlight from the line-up, including Pulp, Friendly Fires and The Streets

24 Feb 2011

It's that time of year again and as yet another blisteringly cold winter shows signs of giving in, we can once again start to dream of the greenest pastures, cold refreshments and a beating sun to boot. Alternatively, we can look forward with a hopeful…

Pulp, Coldplay and Arctic Monkeys confirmed for T in the Park line-up 2011

Foo Fighters also joined by Deadmau5, Bright Eyes and Beady Eye

22 Feb 2011

Coldplay, Foo Fighters, Arctic Monkeys, Pulp, Tinie Tempah, Jessie J, Deadmau5, Friendly Fires, Bright Eyes, Eels, The View, Script, Kesha, Manics, Tom Jones, Death crew 77, Eliza Doolittle, Stornoway, Vitalic, Diplo, Imelda May, Miles Kane, Noah And…

Singles and downloads

Your tunes for the week

21 Aug 2009

Sugababes are sexy and, bless ‘em, they want us to be sexy too, so they’re imploring us to ‘Get Sexy’ (Island) ●●. Strange, then, with all that sexy-talk in the air, the single should be an insipid rehashing of that deeply unsexy Right Said Fred song…

2009 Mercury Music Prize shortlist on show

Regardless of who triumphs, contenders' nomination is gain enough

24 Jul 2009

This past year has seen Elbow prove to all just what a Mercury win can do to a band's career. Though toiling for near 15 years in relative indie obscurity, seemingly destined to never play the arenas their songs merited, their 2008 victory for fourth…

2009 Mercury Prize shortlist announced

Kasabian, The Horrors, Bat For Lashes and others. Plus Spotify playlist

21 Jul 2009

The shortlist for this year's Mercury Prize - the annual £20,000 award for the best album by British and Irish artists - was revealed this morning. The twelve albums nominated were announced by Lauren Laverne at The Hospital club in London's Convent…

T in the Park - Saturday

13 Jul 2009

Having utterly failed to 'tweet' from T in the Park, Brendan Miles is given a second chance to voice his thoughts on some of the best acts to grace Scotland's biggest music festival

Edinburgh Hogmanay music programme swells

27 Nov 2008

One of Edinburgh’s newest venues is set to play host to some of Scotland’s finest folk acts this Hogmanay. The Picture House on Lothian Road will showcase Shooglenifty, Annie Grace, Corrina Hewat and Karine Polwart; alongside the award-winning Malinky…

Singles & Downloads

30 Oct 2008

You know times are tough when you have to resort to Tony Christie to get you through the day. OK, the climate’s shagged and the banks are collapsing, but it’s the piffling amount of brilliant tracks that’s really getting my goat this issue. What? Us…

Friendly Fires

18 Sep 2008

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.

Hydro Connect Festival - Acts you might not know

Fresh Connections

21 Aug 2008

Friendly Fires Their biggest influences are the Kompakt label, Carl Craig and Prince, and they’re named after a track by Blackpool post-punk confederacy Section 25. St Albans trio Friendly Fires (Ed MacFarlane, Jack Savidge and Edd Gibson) are one of…

Friendly Fires - Friendly Fires

21 Aug 2008

This has been a while coming. With the recent flutter of cerebral pop acts with one eye firmly on the dancefloor, it was only a matter of time before the once-ubiquitous cowbell worked its way back into the mix – DFA would approve. This record bursts at…

Hydro Connect Festival 2008 - lineup in detail

17 Jul 2008

Oyster Stage Kasabian There’s a new album on the way from this swaggering fivesome so expect first plays of recently penned material alongside their by-now trademark electro-rock anthems. Manic Street Preachers Following the return to form of last…