Friendly Fires Interview: The New Wave
Friendly Fires find their way back to Australia to play Splendour in the Grass and accompanying Melbourne and Sydney Sideshows. With three releases under the group’s belt, they are looming, set to strike very soon. We chat to Jack Savidge about their return and the upcoming Australia dates.
Congratulations on coming back from hiatus and taking the plunge into your next chapter.
How has it felt so far?
I think it’s been good. It’s still only getting started. We’ve done 20 or 25 shows and the album is still to come out. It’s exciting and feels like we’re busy, but haven’t gotten to the meat of it, which is where we’re getting to now.
Has being on a hiatus replenished your energy and given you confidence rather than being actively releasing and touring?
I don’t think we feel a confidence [from having] loads of time off. In many ways, it is hard to get back into it. I don’t think it’s an automatic confidence booster. But [the time off] was good for some other things. It allowed a bit of maturing time and time to know what life is like without it.
We all came out of university and went straight into the band and the band went off. That was all until we were about 30 [years old]. There wasn’t much time to think about anything else. It’s less of a confidence thing and hopefully a personal maturation thing.
Do you think your growth and maturation as a working musician is different to your growth when embarking on a more routine, daily life?
I think [living life] is important. We spent a long, long time on tour for the first two albums. Maybe, [now] the band feels more settled in where we live and stuff like that. One can sort of draw a confidence from that. It’s a sort of self-respect thing as well. It’s important to have a life outside of music and to have things like hobbies and goals that aren’t music related. That’s what I’ve learnt in that period.
Were you ever, before the break, concerned with external noise and fan expectations? How has that shifted?
I think the expectation was always there, and we do hear it. We’re not oblivious to it at all. Even this year and last year, there were lots of people saying, ‘just release the fucking album’. I think you have to see the encouragement. While it can be a bit of a destabilising thing, messages like that, you have to take the positive from them and know there is an expression of demand for your music and your existence. Hopefully, it’s a positive energy.
Friendly Fires’ release order has been enticing and climactic, consisting of two singles and a cover of ‘Lack of Love’.
Can you talk about building that excitement and anticipation with fans?
We felt it was important to get music out before we did our first bunch of shows last year. We felt that if we didn’t do that, it was kind of like a nostalgia trip to do the shows. That was our first deadline. Ultimately, we didn’t have what we felt was a complete record until really recently. It was just us wanting to get things moving with new music. In an ideal world, ‘Love Like Waves’, ‘Heaven Let Me In’ [release time], we’d be jumping into an album at that point. It just didn’t really work out like that.
The last two songs we just finished on the record, they’re my two favourites. They just have something together and work really nicely together. It would be a hard thing to leave them off. It’s just how it’s worked out really. With releasing and writing music, there’s stuff you do by design, and then there’s stuff that just falls into place and it just is. That’s the way it’s worked out.
How do you reach the consensus between you three to extend the process rather than jump at the first opportunity to release?
I think it was a group decision. One just kind of knows. When we were thinking about, what’s the next single, if there’s not an obvious answer, we’ve got to go and write one and generate that. It just made sense.
When an album is done, it feels overcooked in a way from the people who are making it’s perspective. It’s because of the intense process of writing and recording. It’s possibly easier from our side to feel like something’s finished than it is from the label and management’s perspective. We’re really, really ready now, which is good. I think it’s important to go through those processes and make sure the hoops are correctly jumped through.
The curation of ‘Love Like Waves’, then releasing ‘Heaven Let Me In’ and your cover of ‘Lack of Love’ exhibit the group’s duality.
Do you find it easier to write about more dejecting moments or the more uplifting material?
I think the more uplifting stuff. I think we wanted the record to be a more positive, uplifting experience. That permeates most of the record that we’ve made. I don’t know that it’s easier to write about that stuff. I think that themes and lyrics and concepts should fit neatly into the sound of the music. Themes and lyrics are very explicit, whereas emotions conveyed through a piece of music can be somewhat implicit. It’s hoping that those work together to create the desired effect. Most of our stuff currently is quite positive.
‘Lack of Love’ is a cover, but I suppose in many ways, one’s always going to be feeding off someone’s emotional experience when you do a cover. It was more about elaborating on that and trying to put ourselves in those shoes.
Can you talk about translating the cohesion you aim to build into the live setting?
Our live show is quite up. It’s an expression of energy and for the crowd, we hope it’s a communal experience. When we do longer sets, we probably include our more reflective songs. In what we’ve been doing recently, in festivals, it tends to be very full throttle and bang, bang, bang. It’s curious. We just have a template of the show in our heads that tends to be quickfire and banging the songs out. It’s just meant to move the crowds.
Any last words about Splendour in the Grass and Sideshow dates?
I’m really excited about them. I love coming to Australia. I really like SITG every time that we’ve done it. I think this’ll be our third time. Also, I think it’s really fun to be able to go somewhere and do a festival and two shows. The festival is probably quite short, and it’s nice to be able to do club shows as well because they tend to be more drawn out and deeper into the vibe. That’s always kind of exciting.
Friendly Fires appear enthused about exuding their live show electricity in Australia. Don’t miss out on tickets here.