Friendly Fires - Pala (2011-present)

Pala (2011-present)

In May 2011, their second album Pala was released. The first single was "Live Those Days Tonight", soon followed by "Hawaiian Air". On 20 August of that year, Friendly Fires announced that their trumpet player, Richard Turner, who contributed to their live shows, had died. Turner had suffered a cardiac arrest while swimming on 19 August 2011. At the end of 2011, Friendly Fires played their biggest UK tour to date, starting in Brighton on 10 November, and performing in cities, such as Birmingham, Newcastle, Glasgow and London. An ongoing illness of singer Ed Macfarlane's caused several of these gigs to be rescheduled for December 2011.

Friendly Fires headlined the inaugural ABLE2UK charity concert for disabled awareness on 20 August 2012 at The Roundhouse in London. All proceeds from ticket sales went to ABLE2UK.

When asked in July 2012 by NME about their future direction, Macfarlane stated that the trio have no intentions of writing another pop record like Pala. They have been working with producer Andrew Weatherall and so far, they have come up with some dramatically different results to the band's usual output. Speaking to NME at Poland's Open'er Festival, Macfarlane said, "The music - the way we're writing and the style of it - is very different to anything we've done before; I think we're still learning to write music in a different way. We want to write something long and expansive and drawn-out and, I suppose, a bit more psychedelic." Macfarlane also confirmed that the tracks would definitely be released at some point, most probably under the band's name, "even if it is totally weird, psyched out, eight-minute long jams, we're still gonna call it Friendly Fires."