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The hottest summer on record feels like a good time for the long-awaited return of a band who epitomise hedonistic euphoria and festival-filling anthems. Friendly Fires have been away for a long time, and we've been here before. Following their seismic burst of early success from their landmark debut album to 2011's 'Pala', the band took a long break before remerging for 2019's 'Inflorescent'. Now, seven years later, Friendly Fires once again rise from the ashes with a brand new single, some staggeringly good festival shows and the promise of much more to come. "It's a new start. Everything's kicking off," smiles singer Ed Macfarlane.
The version of Friendly Fires that returns in 2026 is different practically and ideologically to the one that scaled the heights of mainstream success in the early 2010's. They're now down to a duo of Ed the singer and guitar player Edd Gibson, following Jack Savidge's departure this year. Ideologically, the band are eager to cut out any of the baggage that has cost them so much time over the last 15 years.
"I'm not criticising the way we've done things in the past, but doing an album has always felt like a huge mountain to climb," admits Ed. "We're trying to become an artist in the truest sense of the word, someone who just creates every day regardless of the results. We've got bogged down in trying to create something perfect, and before you know it, years have passed. Now, we're coming into our own and just really enjoying the process and trying to keep the wheels in motion and keep things ticking along."
There's a sense that if the band had stayed on the treadmill, making album after album, they certainly wouldn't be here now with fresh, exciting music, and Friendly Fires wouldn't have the alluring mystique that they have. "On the second record, I remember feeling like, right, we just have to write a load of songs with big catchy choruses," says Ed. "It felt like we'd forced ourselves into a bracket where we had to write these big choruses where I'm belting out at the top of my range. For me, I was fed up with that. Edd and I went off and did this side project for a label called Ghost Box that was the absolute opposite of what we did as Friendly Fires. We had to do that. We had to step away from it."
Despite the long periods of inactivity, there was never a time when Friendly Fires didn't exist. "We've always been writing," explains Ed. "We have around two albums' worth of album outtakes. We've got a radio show that we've just put out that has a lot of clues as to what new music is about. We have so many instrumentals and so many ideas. It was about finding the right time to feel like we're saying something that actually means something to us. At the end of album two in 2012, it was starting to feel contrived. We don't ever want to do something contrived. We want to do something that has purpose."
That purpose was found in their live show. Friendly Fires have always been a band who make intensely physical dance music. "We're all about the live show. When we play, we play with passion and 100% conviction," says Ed confidently. "It has to be something that means something to us so that we can sing every night. Sometimes that comes quickly, and sometimes it doesn't. We're getting better at channelling that part of us."
As the band coalesced around the duo of Ed and Edd, the two long-time friends and bandmates found common ground in the lyric writing process that sparked a new kind of inspiration. "Edd and I have known each other since we were 13 and experienced so much together," says Ed. "Some things we haven't talked about, and some things we have. There's so much together that we're able to bring out that feels like a Friendly Fires song and lyrically, that there's stuff to be said. Maybe we just didn't know that before."
"We're back in the garage and doing things in an organic way"
The first piece of music from the new era of Friendly Fires is the epic 5-minute odyssey of 'Lose All Your Friends', a track that has all the hallmarks of classic Friendly Fires with a cavernous widescreen deep groove influenced by some of the guitar bands who had most affinity to the dancefloor. "We were thinking a lot about the band and where we fit into the lineage of indie dance music," says Ed. "That term only came about in the late eighties, but the elements of that sound go right back to the 70s, especially with bands like Talking Heads, who have been a huge inspiration for us. It felt like we'd never really touched on that late 80s baggy, slow chuggy groove."
Despite the doom of the title, the track is a positive statement about embracing whatever possibilities lie in front of you. "It's about feeling lost and separate but with the thrill of what you can discover," says Ed excitedly.
The deeper lyrical themes are a result of the creative nucleus of the band solidifying around Ed and Edd following Jack's departure. "It felt upsetting when Jack said he wanted to leave, bear in mind he had moved to Berlin at this point," says Ed. "He had already kind of stepped away, though. In all honesty, Edd and I have a working relationship that just works."
The relationship grew even closer as the duo began to look back on seismic life events that have influenced the band. It became a whole new way of being Friendly Fires. "A friend of ours took his own life when we were growing up, and Edd and I just never talked about it; these are things we've buried somewhere. How can we talk about this in a way that feels positive and uplifting? Something that makes it feel like a Friendly Fires song, we don't want it to be surface-level. These were things we sat down and thrashed out together in a room. We'd stay up to 3 in the morning drinking, crying, writing things down. We've never written lyrics like that before. It was a joint thing."
There's no escaping the element of nostalgia when a beloved band from one of the last golden ages of British alternative music returns, but for Ed, he looks at some of Friendly Fires' contemporaries and finds inspiration in how to be more popular than ever while having a newfound freedom to create. "I've never been the biggest fan of The Kooks," says Ed, offering an example. "I find the music very boring, but I really respect that they've just stuck at it. They still look the same and are bigger now than they ever were. I want more bands to be like that."
Ed is also crucially someone else who looks the same and has lost none of his iconic dance moves. "Playing live feels like a real privilege," he beams. "These have been some of the best live shows we've done. It feels so good on stage, and I feel so confident with the band playing behind me. It's a very physical show. I'm dancing nonstop. It just feels thrilling."
Learning to temper expectations has given the band a new, enlightened perspective on what they can be. "When you keep your expectations low, then you're writing for the right reasons, you want to write something that feels cool to you. I'm trying not to focus on the outcomes and do whatever we can. We want to keep writing and creating," says Ed. "While I love the last record, it was in very difficult circumstances; it was on a major label and sometimes felt a little forced. It wasn't produced by us. We're back in the garage and doing things in an organic way. We have the tools to make things sound really good, but we're also trying to keep it raw. We can capture the energy of the performance."
So, with some triumphant live shows in the bag and a killer new single, what can Friendly Fires fans expect heading into 2027? "There's a lot to be excited about," says Ed with a twinkle in his eye. "We have no intention of stopping."
Friendly Fires' single 'Lose All Your Friends' is out now.
