FRIENDLY FIRES

0 Comments | Sunday Herald, The, Sep 7, 2008 | by Paul Dalgarno

FRIENDLY FIRES

Friendly Fires (XL Recordings)

3 stars

INEVITABLY, a number of the electroindie-pop-rave bands of the moment will sink without a trace, and that's all good and proper. But Friendly Fires, from St Albans, might weather the storm. These are songs to return to and remember - not all of them, but enough. They sound, at times, like the 1980s band Japan: cold vocals and chilly synths.

But, for the most part, those elements are pressed into warm basslines and roasting cowbells.

First single Paris sums up the band's suburban dreams and the need to transgress them ("One day we're going to live in Paris, I promise, I'm on it"). It was played live in a BBC studio during the recent Reading and Leeds Festival coverage, with frontman Ed Macfarlane, left, dancing like something broken and still breaking. Occasionally, the tracks have distortions reminiscent of American indie pop outfi t Of Montreal.

The Fires are cruising through the slipstream of Klaxons, making pop with a boot of authority they should grow into.

DOWNLOAD THIS: Paris