Friendly Fires

Friendly Fires’ new and fourth album Dig Deeper lives up to its title in more ways than one. It’s the sound of one of the world’s best-loved indie-dance bands doubling down on what makes their song DNA so special. It’s two childhood best mates, Ed Macfarlane and Edd Gibson, peeling back the layers to make their most profound music yet. And it’s the result of a revitalised self-assurance and self-reliance after working on new material for nearly a decade. Time for Friendly Fires to step back into the spotlight and claim their place at British pop’s top table. “This is some of the best music we’ve written,” says Macfarlane. “Doing something truly honest, putting it out there and hoping it connects with people – that feels like a huge leap of faith for us.”

At one point, the future of Friendly Fires felt uncertain. “We had 100 ideas that never saw the light of day and songs that were finished but still didn’t feel right,” says Macfarlane. “We were unsure about what the point of this was and what we’re about.” There were lengthy gaps between albums. Doubts and crises of confidence. They’d put out three stellar releases – 2008’s self-titled and Mercury Music Prize-nominated debut, 2011’s Pala and the equally critically-acclaimed Inflorescent in 2019 – but for a while, a fourth was elusive. “Sometimes, if you become so caught up in your own perception of who you think you are, it can slow the whole thing down and make you fearful about releasing music,” says Gibson. “We got a bit too tangled in the details instead of putting things out and maintaining a presence.”

Time to unravel it all and start again. Gradually, the pair found a way to get looser with their songwriting process: stop overthinking, start drilling down into the core. “Personally, I feel like when you get older, it becomes hard to take your feelings seriously, without feeling like you’re being melodramatic. Or like, who cares?” says Macfarlane. “I had to find a way to channel that part of myself. So we’d hire out a studio and take just a laptop and a mic. And then we’d talk about our lives and get emotional and capture it all in the recording.”

“Our friendship has been led by the fact we’re in a band together and we’re focused on so many other things,” agrees Gibson. “There were things that Edd and I had never discussed before,” Macfarlane continues, “like a friend of ours passing away when we were younger. And then a dear friend of mine also died during the making of this record.”

The title track is dedicated to our dear friend, the DJ Nick Williams, who worked in the Phonica record shop in London. It’s a gorgeous chugger, with evocative lyrics about never staying still. “His whole life was digging in the crates, digging deeper, always looking for new music and ideas, never being satisfied to stay in one place,” says Macfarlane, “and the song focuses on the need to keep searching.” That sentiment is all over the new album – but there’s also a sense of turning inward and finding strength within themselves. “We didn’t want to work with any external producers this time,” says Gibson, “and I think there’s a real honesty that’s come out as a result. These songs have real meaning to us.”

The balmy opening track “Lose Your Friends”, for example, has levels. It could be about “the kind of opportunities that arise from finding yourself in a situation where you’re on your own and you’re forced to engage with strangers and the thrill of that,” says Macfarlane, “like losing your phone, the safety net, and being really truly present in that moment.” But another read of the lyrics, like “don’t be afraid of change / now is the time we should be shaking it up”, speaks to the band and their evolution. Dig Deeper is part manifesto, part autobiography – “SYOTOS” (which stands for “see you on the other side”) is a joyous, highlife-inflected ode to their drummer and childhood friend Jack Savidge, who left the band and moved to Berlin. Another of the more classic-sounding Friendly Fires songs, “Magnetic”, speaks of “when we’re magnetic it’s so hard to let go”, while the sublime “Silver Linings” looks ahead to a positive future.

Beyond the personal material, the pair dug deeper into the key influences at the heart of Friendly Fires too. There’s a sense of collaborating with their past and present selves on the new album, as the pair flipped through their vast vault of song ideas and stems and drew on material that represented the best of the band’s essence. “We blasted back through the archives and reminded ourselves what Friendly Fires are all about,” says Gibson. “There was definitely a conscious effort to come back to what we were about in the first place.”

Firstly, of course, it’s about rhythm. “The dance element of our music is very important,” Macfarlane agrees. “If you can’t make people move their bodies then it’s just not going to be a Friendly Fires show.” And secondly, the spacious, lambent atmosphere. “The initial template, although it didn’t influence every track here, was a remix of My Bloody Valentine’s “Soon” by [the late and legendary DJ] Andrew Weatherall,” says Gibson. “That compares guitars and dance beats perfectly – the lush euphoria and the bombastic grooves. The challenge for us has always been to find that balance.” Friendly Fires once collaborated with Weatherall as part of his Asphodells project and his ethos has stayed with the band. “He spent his entire life constantly searching out inspiring music to play in his incredible DJ sets, and that is the tribe of people that I want to be around in life – the people that really care about the value of art, not on a surface level,” Macfarlane adds.

As a result, Dig Deeper contains some of Friendly Fires’ most ambitious, bombastic blends yet: there are major, sweeping choruses, serene falsetto, supercharged euphoria underpinned by hypnotic dance grooves and cowbell workouts that are poised to whisk you away to more exotic climes. Many of the songs started on the Roland TR-727 with its signature Latin percussion and the duo built them out from there. “We’d mess with the swing, mess with the tempo,” says Macfarlane. “It’s got a distinctly 80s sound, like what Stock Aitken Waterman used on old Kylie records.” But there’s a newfound rawness too: “we used a raucous amplifier for the first time,” continues Gibson, “so nothing is too polished, there’s an element of chaos. And there are drones and feedback all over the record” (see, especially, the murky cosmic krautrock of “Cuban Heels”).

They drew up a huge playlist of indie-dance bands from across the eras, from 70s Talking Heads and New Order to the Balearic and baggy late-80s through to the halcyon days of ‘nu-rave’, a mid-2000s, short-lived sound from London that Friendly Fires skirted the edges of. “We were able to look through that lineage and see ourselves as part of it,” says Macfarlane, as did James Dring (Jamie T, Gorillaz) who mixed the record. On opening track “Lose Your Friends”, there’s echoes of the Madchester sound; on closing track “Wear It Out”, a nod to Screamadelica; on others, the cosmic chug of bands that were coming out on DFA Records in a post-Strokes New York. “We really care about this kind of music,” he adds. “We’re always operating within this continuum because that’s what inspires us and that is our identity and we’re fully embracing it on Dig Deeper.”

They’re also fully embracing it with their recent live shows. Friendly Fires returned in summer 2026 with a string of festival dates that were an instant reminder of what makes the band so peerless. Full-tilt energy. Maraca-shaking dancing. Ed’s swivel hips. Joined by longtime friends Rob Lee on drums and Jack Hamson on bass on percussion, their shows seamlessly blend new tracks with their hits from across the decades, sounding ever-timeless. “I’ve never felt this confident in my life, playing with the music that we play,” says Macfarlane. And the music press and fans agree: of their performance at Truck Festival, DORK wrote: “Friendly Fires put it all on the line and after 20 years still give more of a f*** about their live show than any of their contemporaries.”

Dig Deeper is exactly that. As another one of their superb new tracks goes, it’s a “Leap of Faith”. A shot in the dark. Friendly Fires are putting it all on the line again, after all this time. This is hearts-open, feelgood indie-dance for the best of times you remember and the best of times now. Ready to jump in?