Returning shoegaze trio Friendly Fires have spoken about their new material, including a sly dig at MGMT.
With their debut album, Friendly Fires seemed to catch a new mood in guitar music. Over in Brooklyn, the first stirrings of a shoegaze revival were making themselves known while the St Albans trio were already in the Top Ten.
A stunning success, Friendly Fires’ debut album was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize. Returning with the samba flavoured single ‘Kiss Of Life’ last year, the trio have knuckled down the working on their second album.
Due for release later this year, the band recently revealed that they are well under way on the new album. However one seething doubt lurks in the back of their mind – doing an MGMT and returning with an album of wilfully uncommercial material.
“I really hope we are not going to do what MGMT did,” guitarist Edd Gibson told the Daily Record. “Whatever it is they have done, we want to steer well clear of it. I don’t understand why they would make such a leap, go from great pop songs to just any old acoustic music played in anyone’s bedroom.”
MGMT’s new album ‘Congratulations’ swaps glorious psych-pop for an album which has confounded fans expectations. Billed by the band themselves as ‘a joke’ it has received mixed critical acclaim.
Continuing, the Friendly Fires guitarist revealed that they have “finished four songs completely”. Despite their success, however, the trio are still working in lead singer Ed MacFarlane’s garage.
“We haven’t moved on to some lavish studio,” Gibson explained. “We’re back where it all began. It’s nice we are still doing it that way, we’re our own bosses.”
Friendly Fires are due to play a series of festivals this summer including Parklife, Wireless and Scotland’s wildest party RockNess.
