Friendly Fires @McClusky’s
Friendly Fires – gig review
McClusky’s in Kingston is an odd place for a band like Friendly Fires to play, in fact it’s an odd place for anyone to play. An accurate description would be a Wetherspoons with live music. To be fair the stage and dance floor could be any small venue in the world and for the euphoric art-house pop of one of 2008′s best breakthrough artists it worked pretty well.
Friendly Fires quietly slipped in last year, arriving after the initial wave of horribly dubbed ‘nu rave’ bands such as Klaxons and NYPC they managed to avoid all the tacky glow-stick hype and neon. Having seen what’s subsequently happened to Shit Disco and The Sunshine Underground and without trying to forge conspiracies perhaps it was no coincidence that it took them two years to produce their ten track self-titled debut album.
The album is a cracker and the band do a good job converting it to a live show. Lead singer Ed MacFarlane manages to transfer all the energy from the record. They open up with previous single, ‘Jump In The Pool’, the breakdown is reminiscent of late Talking Heads with its strong influence of world music, cowbells and all, which works well to get the crowd into it.
They continue to work through the high points of ‘Friendly Fires’, crowd favourites ‘Paris’ and ‘Photobooth’ have the crowd singing back them giving a real show of just how catchy and uplifting the lyrics are. The chorus of ‘Paris’ allows MacFarlane to really let rip on the vocals and Edd Gibson’s synths sound almost E.L.O.-ish, it’s great stuff.
The pace is frenetic and impressively Friendly Fires manage to pull it off for the whole show, any lull is just a build up for a crescendo. ‘White Diamonds’ provides no finer example with the toe-tapping slowly building to foot stopping and by the time the hook comes in no one in the front is able to stand still. The penultimate track is twinkle-pop beauty ‘Strobe’ which really should have closed the set but with a single to promote they close with ‘Skeleton Boy.’ By this time the crowd have calmed down and serves as a reminder that Friendly Fires are by no means the finished article.
They’ll be back in London with the ‘NME Awards Tour’ at Brixton Academy on the 21st of February and despite an inevitable hefty price for the corporate variety show a chance to see them shouldn’t be passed up lightly.
Tickets are available for all UK venues from seetickets
Tags: Beachdownwriter
What's on your mind?
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February 14th 2009 | 1
John Regis. says:
Great review i’ll have to check them out when there next about.
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The Hussy says:
They have mainly sold out, but good luck!
