Unlikely Sources: Ed Macfarlane of Friendly Fires

At the heart of one of the UK's most beloved indie-dance bands of the last 20 years is an unexpected love of hardcore.

Ed Macfarlane at his home studio in Hitchin, England. August 2023.

Welcome to Unlikely Sources, a recurring monthly feature where I approach creatives from different walks of public life who are generally not associated with their love of hardcore to talk about three hardcore songs that have personal meaning to them. In this first edition, I welcome Ed Macfarlane from Friendly Fires.

In the UK, Friendly Fires are a legacy indie-dance band at this point: They’ve had Top 10 albums, they’ve been nominated for Brit Awards and for the prestigious Mercury Music Prize, and they’ve had certified Gold and Silver albums. On top of all that, frontman Ed Macfarlane has also contributed as a singer, songwriter, and collaborator for major electronic artists ranging from Disclosure to the Blessed Madonna.

Years before all of this came to be, however, Ed was a young kid who somehow discovered hardcore from his rural England home. Almost 25 years later, he still draws inspiration from this community—even if he’s reluctant to embrace the nomenclature of being a “hardcore kid.”

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Ed takes his pilgrimage to CBGB. New York City, 1999.

Was being a hardcore kid ever something you truly identified with? Or was it something that you just sort of stumbled into?

ED: If we’re talking about being within a community of people and working in a scene and doing things together in a scene, then no, I’ve never “been hardcore.” I’ve always been someone on the outside looking in. But that hasn't stopped me from loving the music. When I was younger, I was just too shy to go up and say hello to people and become involved in a scene. I also wasn't geographically in the right place to really be involved in a scene.

Where did you grow up?

ED: Outside of St. Albans, really in the countryside. I lived down the road from Stanley Kubrick, or at least where he used to live. It isn’t that far from London, but when you are 15 years old, you don’t really have [that access]. It's always been something for me where the music has come first, and then there might be one gig a weekend that I can go to and check out—and then I'll go and I’ll just be the shy kid at the back and not talk to anyone.

It’s interesting to me that it seems to me that your line of demarcation for “being a hardcore kid” is more an issue of whether or not you felt like you were contributing to the scene in some sort of palpable way—as opposed to maybe accepting that just going to a show is contributing to the scene.

ED: Well, if that makes you hardcore, then maybe I was hardcore [laughs]. This might be off-topic, but did you see that Hate5Six video of Mindforce? It was them playing live and the singer made a speech about, “You can watch hardcore on your laptop or whatever, but you ain’t one of us if you’re not down here in the trenches doing this shit!”

I did see that.

ED: Where do you stand on that?

I think it depends on your access. I think that there are people who still live in places where there are no trenches. Hate5Six is like a gateway into the trenches—and it’s an amazing thing. But if I live in New York City and I just sit around watching videos all day, OK, yeah, maybe I should go to a show [laughs].

ED: Yeah, it's interesting. I got into hardcore in ‘98 or ‘99. So it was like, you know, Blink-182 were huge, Green Day were huge, and it was also the start of that whole straight ahead, emo-y, metalcore thing, which was really popular in St. Albans. It wasn't really my cup of tea. But there were two girls, Polly and Shez, who were into the same kind of punk and hardcore I liked. They'd been to a Hellfest, you know? They'd made this sort of epic pilgrimage to go and see big bands of the late ‘90s—like Converge or whatever.

So what was one of the first bands that really clicked for you?

ED: I've got a good answer for that. Hearing Shelter.

Oh no! [laughs]

ED: I heard “Civilized Man” on a snowboarding video or something. And I was like, “Ooh, I really like this. I can get my head around it. The production is shiny and clean [laughs].” But from there I listened to Youth of Today on the In-Flight Program compilation, and I couldn’t put the two together. I was like, this can’t be the same vocalist!

YOUTH OF TODAY “Expectations” (Can’t Close My Eyes 7”, 1985)

One of the songs you picked was “Expectations” by Youth of Today. The first song on their first 7-inch, and definitely not the most produced song in their catalog. What resonates with you?

ED: I mean, it’s not the first Youth of Today tune I heard. I started with Break Down the Walls and We’re Not in This Alone, and then worked my way back to the first 7-inch. It took me a while to get it, but once I did, it just spoke to me. And there are peripheral things about the band that spoke to me as well—not just the specific song itself, although the lyrics themselves are great. I think I listened to a podcast with Porcell where he said Ray Cappo wrote that song about the relationship between Porcell and his dad.

The Big V! They called Porcell’s dad the Big V [laughs]. I’ve heard so many stories about him.

ED: Is it just that he was quite an imposing, strict dad? 

Let's put it this way. The fact that you said this song was about the Big V makes complete sense to me. There was always a real sense of the Big V being the type of dad who’d be like, “John, I'm very disappointed in you.” 

ED: I can relate to that. My parents have always been really supportive of me making music, but even now I still know that they don't quite think it's a legitimate way to make an income [laughs]. I was a middle-class white kid. Pretty cleancut. I went to a fucking private school. I feel like there are a lot of correlations between me and this song. Obviously, everyone's parents have expectations, but I feel like I relate quite a lot to the character in this song. My dad was a real working-class guy that worked his way up from the bottom, and then he sort of made it, so now he’s like, “You’ve got to do something with your life. You can't do this [laughs].”  I think it's interesting how people of that generation have this perception of what safety is—where “I expect you to go down this path because it's going to be a respectable and safe way to live your life.” Nothing in life is safe.

I mean, it is absolutely the most relatable Youth of Today song of all time. And for it to be the first song on the first 7-inch,  they pretty much guaranteed that everyone was going to be like, “Fuck yeah! Get off my back!”

ED: Every kid feels like that! I think the paths that we’ve chosen being creative people, it’s a struggle just to make sure you’ve got enough to pay your bills. But I don’t want to do anything else with my life. This is what I want to do. This is it. And I’m sorry if that upsets you, but this is the path I’ve chosen to take. So I love that fist-clenched passion in the song. Every Youth of Today song makes me want to clench my fist like the logo [laughs]. I don’t know how to describe it. It’s not even anger. It’s just really intense, positive enthusiasm.

It's funny because we started this conversation talking about you coming in from the suburbs of London and being the quiet suburban kid coming to the shows. But also, that was literally Youth of Today. That was Ray and Porcell coming in from Connecticut and Westchester, and everybody giving them side-eye like, "What are these suburban kids doing in the fucking scene?" And them having to make their way and just figure it out and be who they were.

ED: And ultimately probably getting more respect because of it, and then changing the scene as a whole. 

KISS IT GOODBYE “Helvetica” (She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not..., 1997)

The second song you picked was “Helvetica” by Kiss it Goodbye, which is arguably the polar opposite of Youth of Today.

ED: I always work my way backwards with most bands. I get into bands when they’ve either broken up or I’m on the fourth album and I’m going backwards—or they’re on their fourth band. Like in the case of Kiss it Goodbye, I’d never heard Deadguy before, I’d never heard Rorschach, I’d never heard No Escape. But having said that, all of the bands Tim Singer has been in sound pretty good; to me, they’ve stood the test of time. So going back to that song, I think initially I was like, this fucking vocal performance is so intense. It has this kind of almost free-jazz vocal approach to it. And I just thought that it was so different to other bands, different to other vocalists. The music itself didn't sound like a lot of metalcore or whatever; it sounded more punk, more distorted and turned up, more gnarly. 

This might be a weird question, but hearing the way you’re getting so granular about the vocal performance, and being a vocalist yourself, does music like this ever seep into the way you approach a vocal in Friendly Fires?

ED: Well, I think that's part of the reason why I've chosen this song. I actually sent Tim a message and said, “This is some of my favorite vocals of any genre.” It sounds like he’s just channeling his emotions in a very pure and undisturbed way. But also, lyrically, it’s about any kind of media that is seeping its way into your mind to try and shift your political perspective—that’s how I hear it—and I feel like that’s so important right now, especially with the deluge of media coming our way from all angles. When he’s screaming, “Turn it off!”… It’s overwhelming.

It’s also so prescient. This came out in 1997. I think Texas is the Reason got our first AOL email address in 1996 [laughs]. But it feels prescient in the sense where it sounds like he’s talking about this approach that has since become very common among politicians—the whole, faux-populist, “I am your friend” approach. 

ED: That's exactly it. It is this faux friendliness that's trying to offer people some kind of false sense of security in times that are very uncertain and scary. It's really predatory almost. 

How did you personally acclimate to social media when it started happening?

ED: I barely remember Friendster, but I was on Friendster and then onto MySpace. And then our band kind of got famous through MySpace, so I can't knock social media. I feel like obviously my life would be better without it, and yet I still need it. I don’t know how to elaborate on that except to say that it’s a necessary means to an end. We’ve just got to use it now.

Be honest. Do you ever gauge any sort of self-worth or value for yourself or the band based on social media engagement or interaction?

ED: Yeah, 100 percent [laughs]. I also know that we don't put enough effort in. I know that we don't have, like, a treasure trove worth of images of us ready to put up and ready to write blurbs about. Like, I’ve been watching the whole Botch reunion. I don’t know who does their social media or if it’s Dave, the guitar player, who does it, but he’s very good at it! For a band of their age and what they do, he’s good at keeping the engagement going. And I think it pays off. But for me, I just feel like, what do you want me to do? I’m in the fucking studio. Do you want me to just take the same picture again and again and again? How do people work around it? I don’t know.

Have you seen this band, Silly Goose, that basically sets up in parking lots or inside of a Waffle House or at house parties? I mean, I don’t know if I love the band but their social media campaign is fucking on fire [laughs].

ED: But what happens if you are just that shy kid? Do you have to do the Boards of Canada thing? Or be like Aphex Twin and just try to create some cult status around you because you don't want to just communicate with people on a daily basis? What if you just can’t do that?

AMEBIX “Battery Humans” (No Sanctuary, 1983)

So how do you get aware of Amebix?

ED: Amebix were one of those bands where—probably because they're British and a bit more in the vein of Discharge—you could maybe find one of their records in HMV. The stuff on Revelation or whatever, that didn’t find its way into provincial record stores or provincial towns.

Why did you choose “Battery Humans” for this?

ED: I haven't chosen Amebix necessarily for the lyrics of this song—because the lyrics are obviously really political and very dark—but in terms of bands that, as a whole, I feel like I have a connection with or an affinity with, they're one of those bands that kind of combine punk rawness with an almost mystical, pastoral kind of element to it.

I've spent my life living in the countryside, pretty much. At the moment, I live in the outskirts of a village. I've always been a pretty reclusive person. A lot of my listening experience is spent wearing headphones, walking around in fields. A lot of my teenage years growing up were me and my friends doing acid and mushrooms in fields, and Amebix just evokes that for me. It sounds like music that is really in touch with the British countryside—like a lot of music I would get into later on, like Boards of Canada and that whole Warp Records scene that also had an affinity with the British countryside. Aphex Twin is from Cornwall, and Amebix, I think they recorded some of their music in the Devonshire countryside. One of their tracks is called “The Moor.”

Something that’s quite unique about the British countryside is, like, I live right next to a Saxon settlement—literally, it’s next to my house. It’s that thing of being surrounded by history. And it's hard to describe how that comes across in musical terms, but you can just feel it when you hear it.

It’s funny because personally, when I listen to Amebix, I think of 1987 and the Lower East Side and crust punks. But also, over the years, one of the ways that bands like Amebix and Discharge and Crass have come up is as a distinct influence for a lot of early black metal bands.

ED: And that's exactly what I was about to say!

So bands like Darkthrone or Bathory… These guys are pagans who are into nature. 

ED: It has that connection. And even melodically in that song, it sounds like early Burzum. Some of the riffs sound like something off the first two Burzum records. It's something about those melodic choices that evoke this kind of lonesome, misanthropic mood that, for me, suits the countryside. When you hear those bands, maybe it makes you think of the Norwegian fjords at night. Whereas when I hear Amebix, it makes me think of a really grim, gray, misty moor—which is pretty much where I've been dwelling for most of my life. It feels like it, anyway. It's probably one of the few things about British culture that I actually like, that I find fascinating [laughs].

Well, OK. I'll end by asking this. We started by talking about something that happened roughly 25 years ago—discovering the In-Flight Program sampler and discovering this new style of music. But hardcore is still something that you listen to and engage with. It’s not like this was some cute thing you did when you were a kid. Something about it has stuck with you to the point that, 25 years later… You were literally just telling me earlier how you just went to a Sunami show in London [laughs]. Are you willing to revisit the question about hardcore as an identity yet?

ED: It’s like… Why do I still hold onto it and almost want to advertise it to a certain extent? It’s because I like what it stands for. I still like what it stands for. I don't think the message has changed in 25 years. I think the good records—the lyrics still mean as much now as they did then, if not more. But honestly it still feels to me like it's a little bit exclusive, it's not for everyone. I love how Andrew Weatherall had a club night called “Music’s Not for Everyone.” [Laughs] I don't think hardcore is for everyone. I do feel a bit of pride in the fact that I like these bands and listen to these bands—even if I've never met them. That’s why it's so amazing to be talking to you now. Because they still feel special to me 25 years later. 

But when you say “hardcore’s not for everyone,” the inverse of that is, “But it is for me.” And so, on that level, you’re as much a part of the community as anyone else.

ED: I appreciate that. I’m sure there are people who would disagree, but I don’t care.

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