Music

Download a track from Franz Ferdinand's forthcoming album ‘Tonight: Franz Ferdinand’.

Given Franz Ferdinand’s famously refined tastes – personified by Alex Kapranos, who’s wearing what looks like the late Patrick McGoohan’s jacket from ‘The Prisoner’ – and the cultural malaise that sets in every January, Time Out has asked the band to curate an imaginary Festival of Culture for Londoners. With nary a mention of a Russian constructivist or a dadaist, the returning kings of dancefloor-packing garage-disco have come up with a comic book artist whose thirtysomething character polishes his silver way too much, a stand-up comic who picks on overly revered bands and, pushing the culture angle to its very corners, London curry houses. This is the same band of clever-clever UK pop professors who’ve littered their work with references to Alexander Rodchenko and Man Ray since their 2003 debut single, ‘Darts of Pleasure’, which, of course, saw them belting out the refrain, ‘Ich heiße super fantastisch!’ They’re a cultured bunch, that’s for sure. But without their knack for writing thrilling pop hooks and songs about boys, girls and big nights out, that wouldn’t have helped shift half the records they have – though even that would be an awful lot. Still, it has made them – and their rollicking music – a tasty target for over analysis. Feature continues

‘People think we work to some sort of manifesto, or to an agenda in the way an artist might,’ says Kapranos, clad in an impressive pair of tartan slacks. ‘People have this idea that being art, music somehow comes from an intellectual source, which it doesn’t really.’ The Franz Ferdinand we meet in Boston (very busy lads, these) prove this point.

Alex, bassist Bob Hardy, guitarist Nick McCarthy and drummer Paul Thomson (who’ve both had children since their last album, 2004’s ‘You Could Have It So Much Better’) say they’re more relaxed with each other now after the fraught period between the band’s first and second albums and the accompanying neverending tours. ‘Good job you’ve got us now,’ jokes Kapranos, who says he has given up caffeine and sugar to improve his on-tour mood.

Instead of worrying about the time they’re spending away from the studio now that they’re plugging a new album, ‘Tonight: Franz Ferdinand’, the band spend downtime before their gig in Boston critiquing the latest ‘Indiana Jones’ film (‘ “Indiana Jones and The License to Print Money”, ’ Hardy calls it), imitating the cast of telly favourite ‘The Wire’ and christening imaginary toffs: ‘Just pick a posh name and hyphenate two high-street stores,’ says Hardy, ‘like Timothy Woolworths-Jessops’.

Then the band walk on stage at Boston’s Orpheum Theatre and tear through a face-melting set of punk-funk-disco refracted through ELO’s anthemia and The Stooges’ burning guitars, and the art in what they do is suddenly apparent. They are unusual in being able to deliver something clever but accessible to the masses while taking street-level culture to thin folk in black polo necks. In preparation for this album, they even went into the studio with the shining knights of lowbrow, Girls Aloud hit-making machine, Xenomania.

What happened?
Alex ‘It was an experiment. We wanted to hang out with them, we enjoyed that, it was cool. Their methods just didn’t work with our methods. Xenomania is Brian Higgins and a set of other people who write, and that’s what we do. In a way it’s crazy that we end up talking about Xenomania because we should be talking about Dan Carey [Kylie, Lily Allen].

Xenomania didn’t have any impact on the record and Dan Carey did. He saved the soul of the band. His records are pretty radical, in his sound and his attitude to melody. Maybe that’s what had drawn us to Xenomania: the way they arrange songs is radically more experimental than any of the bands who would be considered our contemporaries, like the indie bands around nowadays who are extremely conventional in the way they write and arrange songs.’

Paul ‘When we saw Neil Young the other night you realise how conventional younger bands are. How old is he, man? The way the guitar drones.’

Alex ‘Totally. We were talking to the guy in the radio station about “Ulysses” – what was he saying? “I really like it, but it’s a weird song”. That’s great, it should be odd. It shouldn’t sound like all the other songs on your station. He was like, “Yeah, it doesn’t really sound like your other stuff.” You’re right, it doesn’t!’

By inviting Girls Aloud to support them, are Coldplay seeking a kind of radical pop makeover by osmosis?
Alex ‘I often read about bands slagging off Coldplay and I don’t see the point. He writes good melodies, and he’s got a good voice as well.’

Bob ‘He comes across really well in interviews. He’s hilarious. I think it was around the third album and they were on Steve Lamacq. Some interviewer goes, “So, tell us a bit about yourselves,” and Chris Martin goes, “Hi, we’re Coldplay, we’re a band from north London and we’ve released two albums on our own label, EMI.” ’

Paul ‘He did a link at the NME Awards, like a recorded message, and he went, “Hi, I’m Chris Martin from Band Aid.” That was great.’

Without a plan, how did you go about changing things?
Alex ‘The least original bands are the ones who spend all their time on technique rather than on creating an original thought. It’s about playing it right, doing it properly and that’s how you end up with a stagnant music scene, where people have worked out what the convention is and how you deliver it in the most efficient way. We experimented a lot and spent ages collecting all these odd ways of making sounds.’

Can you name some examples?
Alex ‘Everything from the Flickinger mixing desk to the Polybox Synthesizer to the Red Stripe Compressor, things that you just wouldn’t find on a contemporary record.’

He might be quiet in interview, ceding to a more forceful Kapranos, but McCarthy can take a lot of credit for Franz’s electronic update, which includes filthy techno (the end of ‘Lucid Dream’) and a Konono No 1-aping breakdown (‘Can’t Stop Feeling’). Pushed on his obsession for all things Moog, Nick just says, ‘Yeah, we’re all pretty hot on synths.’ But brought up in
Germany, he’s Franz’s Munich Machine all right, however many boxes of Giorgio Moroder vinyl Thomson might buy. Just watch his Moog-tickling stance, or listen to his Box Codax project, released on hip Berlin label Gomma.

‘I think it’s really important, you know? It makes the band stronger, different influences from outside,’ he says.

‘I know the time I spent with The Cribs in Vancouver was really invigorating,’ adds Kapranos. ‘After spending time with other people, you come back to your own band and you’re keener to work together. You’re inspired, you get fresh ideas.’

Having proved that they don’t have a manifesto and can be as mindless and posturing as any other great rock ’n’ rollers worth their beer, Franz Ferdinand almost ruin things when Thomson says – like a true art theorist – they spent ages trying to unlearn their sound for this new album. ‘Tonight’ does, of course, sound like a Franz Ferdinand record, but, like their fondness for comics about masturbators, it comes with an odd twist.

‘I guess our weirdness threshold is slightly… Is it bigger or smaller? How does a threshold work?’ asks Thomson.

‘Higher or lower,’ offers Kapranos.

‘Yeah, slightly higher than people who programme radio stations,’ finishes Thomson.

So you are you trying to be clever?
‘We were clever right from the beginning,’ grins Kapranos.

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Download a track from their forthcoming album ‘Tonight: Franz Ferdinand’, out this week.

The band play Hammersmith Apollo on Mar 9.