Friendly Fires gaze at their shoes, find them dancing

On Tuesday night, I showed up a little early at the Mayan for Bloc Party, whose intricately austere set confirmed they are rapidly becoming contemporary post-punk's ELO, which is needed and awesome. Opener Does It Offend You, Yeah? (whom I've covered before, and liked) surprised me yet again,  because, judging by the audience squeals of hormonal delight at the "Let's Make Out" intro, they seem to have fully crossed over into L.A.'s idiosyncratic sorority-punk mainstream.

But the big surprise of the night was the first opener Friendly Fires, who pulled off a trick I've been waiting for a band to fully realize -- that cowbell-heavy Liquid Liquid dance beats would sound fantastic with gigantic shoegaze-ambient guitars and the shimmering house synths that too many peers, such as M83, can't seem to use right. 

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They have a humdinger of a single in "Paris," whose lovestruck take on the City of Light ("And every night we'll watch the stars, they'll be out for us") is as cliched as the day is long, but still hits with a panoramic wallop. The snare drum-less chorus is a weird little thing, and almost a comedown from the percussion-mad, Tom Tom Clubby verses, but the endearingly clumsy-dancing frontman Ed Macfarlane has an athletic falsetto that can veer from sounding like Bilinda Butcher to arena-emo in a single line.

The rest of their self-titled debut (out Sept. 1) is a bit more martial and Rapture-ish, especially the almost offensively catchy, Blondie-inspired "On Board," but it's expert party music (they cover old-school Chicago house dude Jamie Principle's "Your Love" live) with the kind of starry-eyed romanticism that should transcend the nightclub circuit and into some off-peak MTV play. It doesn't hurt that, as seen above, they look pretty good doing it. I could totally see this band opening for Panic at the Disco as easily as LCD Soundsystem, and that's no slight. Makes a boy want to crack a decanter of Burgundy and make out with a raccoon-eyed little art student on the banks of the Seine, no?

-August Brown

Friendly Fires plays the Echo tomorrow night.