You look as shocked as we are to see you ba-ba-back on the site after eight years…

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Will Adams: Friendly Fires’ pivot to full-on house fell more to the cheesy side than the sleek side teased by “Defeated No More,” but their commitment to it on Inflorescent sold the shtick. “Silhouettes” embodies that commitment, slapping you in the face with its “ba-ba-da” hook from the start and then shooting space lasers in your eyes. The songwriting doesn’t follow suit, unfortunately; the already slight chorus gets swallowed in Ed Macfarlane’s falsetto. There are stickier tracks on the album that offer the complete package, ba-ba’s and all.
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Kylo Nocom: I could listen to Ed Macfarlane miss his plane for hours. Not even the overbearing ba-ba-das or a limp chorus can stop the band’s groove, which works best when it’s at its most angular.
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Alfred Soto: If it weren’t for the maddening “ba-ba-da” hook, I’d have thought the post-DFA ethos of 2009-2011 that Friendly Fires and, say, Holy Ghost! took advantage of was still going strong. But beneath the margarine-smooth mix “Sihouettes” has lovely bits: the guitar interludes, the faint George Benson lilt to Ed Macfarlane’s vocal melodies, the French pop house sway. It flirts with the vaporous and makes the vapor smell lemon-fresh.
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Scott Mildenhall: As years passed, the ghostly intro to “Jump in the Pool” became more and more Proustian — the crystallisation of a moment in time in which those voices were doomed to remain. So there’s a cheering synchronicity here, with a band so evocative of the end of the last decade rising phoenix-like at the end of this one with their senses of fun and invention intact. No band sounded quite like Friendly Fires then, and happily they still sound like Friendly Fires now; Ed Macfarlane flitting from reverie to intensity while always at home in a production that never sounds as busy as it is.
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Thomas Inskeep: A tweet I sent August 21 reads: “OMG Friendly Fires’ “Silhouettes” is basically turn-of-the-decade DOR [dance-oriented rock] x Wham!’s “Club Tropicana” + disco pew! pew!s and I AM IN LOVE!” Two months later, I stand by every single word.
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Oliver Maier: I’ve had this lot advertised to me endlessly on social media and was thoroughly prepared to loathe this. I don’t though! It’s nice that in the wake of Phoenix disappearing up their own derrieres someone else is prepared to take up their brand of dumb summery dance-rock, even if it doesn’t pull it off as memorably. Blame it on the underwriting. The vibe and production values are there but the melodies aren’t.
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