The consequence of a new Friendly Fires single in 2018 could have been a lot of things, and not all of them are good. Take, for example, a list of events that happened ten years ago when the St Albans group released their break-out single “Paris”. Back then the Labour government were in power (great!), the recession fucked our foreseeable finances into a never-ending overdraft (bad!) and lots of men wore tucked in buttoned up shirts (acceptable but boring!). And so, a Friendly Fires comeback could have easily fallen into the latter two camps – a thing that happened ten years ago that won’t go away / is banal and retrograde. To be good would be difficult.
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Though their debut self-titled record was nominated for a Mercury Prize in 2008, and its follow-up Pala also landed the band at the top-end of many festival bills, there’s always been a sense that Friendly Fires were winging it on the basis of two very good singles (“Paris”, “Jump In The Pool”), two OK ones (“Skeleton Boy”, “Show Me Lights”), the day-glo fumes of new rave and right-place-right-time stroke-of-luck that made them the go-to band for teenagers who had just discovered MDMA but not the depths of actual properly good rave music. Like I said: this is music for past times, bygone eras – just about acceptable as a late-night nostalgia-fuelled excursion into live footage from the 2009 Reading Festival, and strange to imagine happening again in 2018.And yet, here we are: Friendly Fires have released their comeback track “Love Like Waves” and… it bangs?! I say this having listened to it approximately 40 times in the last 24 hours, and so have some expertise. That, or I’ve been tricked, and “Love Like Waves” follows in the hallowed footsteps of other pop songs that shouldn’t be good but are; most likely through first-day-of-summer osmosis by repeated forced listens (AKA like literally 75 percent of songs on the radio you catch yourself singing in moments of pensive reflection?!), but also equally, because it ticks all the boxes. Right now in my state of post-“Love Like Waves” euphoria, the song is implanted in my brain like a superglue-soaked sea anemone. I feel sick; I feel elated (?!); I feel confused; I have also drank a lot of Lucozade.
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Drinking habits aside, the song (which you can listen to above and make your own mind up on) has a lyric that says “let’s make a deal, to keep an open mind”, and I think that’s as good as any prerequisite to listening to a new Friendly Fires song in 2018, which I absolutely did not do, but still: there it is. On that note, here are some for and againsts for the new Friendly Fires song “Love Like Waves”.Against– It is Friendly Fires and it is 2018 (uh, did you not read the prerequisite above?!)– It has been around in one form or another since 2012, so isn’t exactly newFor– Vibes (I’m sorry)– This is definitely going to go on Radio 1’s A-list isn’t it?– Remember the PS1 game Ridge Racer? The chugging synths on the pre-chorus sound like thundering through level one of that game with a stomach full of glucose and the open road ahead, AKA some hyperactive and slightly unreal fever dream that is at least slightly detached from reality and all the better for it– Fucking hellAt this point I’m gonna stop writing fors because it’s probably better for everyone, so just go ahead and listen to the song at least 20 times.You can find Ryan on Twitter.