Dig Deeper (Dinked Edition #441)

Friendly Fires are today announcing their long-awaited new album Dig Deeper for release on 15th January 2027 through LAB Records.

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.

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. “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.”

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.”

With that in mind, 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.”

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.

Commenting on new single ‘Magnetic’, the band says: “Attraction is a force so strong it can be beyond our control. What we want and what we should do aren’t always the same. Can you ever take charge over something so powerful?”

Side A

1. Lose All Your Friends

2. Leap of Faith

3. Gold Dust

4. Magnetic

5. Dig Deeper

Side B

6. Orbital

7. Silver Lining

8. Cuban Heels

9. SYOTOS

10. Catherine Wheel

11. Wear It Out