Friendly Fires

Santos Party House,

New York

26/07/08

The Fly bump into a group of hipsters in a local thrift store in New York’s Lower East Side hours before tonight’s gig (how cool does that sound?!) whose attempts at chatting-up come in quite handy when we need directions to Friendly Fires first New York show. The venue is Santos Party House and according to these young fellows it’s THE place that “everyone’s talking about” at the moment, which in NYC means it’s got to be pretty darn special.

Jetlagged and extremely excited, we wait in anticipation for the band’s 1am performance in the dark, sweaty, slightly sleazy yet incredibly sleek venue in
China
Town, watching an out-of-his-face break dancer amongst other strange cretins who have inexplicably wandered into this show before the
St Albans disco boys arrive on stage. Dressed in shirts, brogues and suit trousers with not a spec of neon to eliminate any kind of Nu-Rave preconceptions, Friendly Fires turn a rather bizarre audience in to jiggly John Travoltas with their luscious mix of euphoric dance and magnificent, dizzying pop.

Kicking off with their glistening debut album intro and forthcoming single ‘Jump In The Pool’, the band purge the sweat from those courageous New Yorkers who have dared to experience the unknown. ‘On Board’, ‘Paris’ and ‘In the Hospital’ send the crowd in to a disco frenzy and by mid way through the R’n’B seduction of ‘Lovesick’ we’re pretty sure that break-dancer has spaffed all his load by now and is crumpled on the floor in front of frontman Ed Macfarlane, who proves there’s only space for one man to bust out the jagged Jagger-esque funk moves in this City tonight.

Although lacking in some of the bombast of their confrontational UK shows (possibly due to the fact that they are shitting it), for a band who’ve come all the way from a town hall in St Albans to the sweaty pit of New York’s freshest place to be, Friendly Fires confirm that they’ve well and truly put the fire back in the disco.

Harriet Gibsone