CityLife

Franz Ferdinand embrace thrill of the night

POP ARCH DUKES: Franz

ALEX Kapranos - frontman of Franz Ferdinand, erstwhile food critic, fashion muse and proud owner of the sexiest underbite in pop - is reminiscing about an array of surreal experiences that the group have experienced over their seven-year existence.

"Seeing Snoop Dogg busk one of our songs in an interview was pretty weird," he remembers. "Actually, meeting Johnny Marr was a big moment for me. It was when we played with The Cribs at the Barras, in Glasgow.

"I was a bit nervous as he'd been a real hero when I was a kid. The riff to What Difference Does It Make? was one of the first things I worked out on the guitar.

"Anyway, I was backstage and a wee bit tongue-tied, but before I could say anything, he was telling me how he'd been showing his son how to play the riff from Do You Want To on the guitar.

"Not even Take Me Out! What a gent."

Sequestered in a Soho hotel, the 36-year-old is frantically packing for a gig in Vienna and reflecting on Tonight: Franz Ferdinand.

Three years and a battalion of producers in the making, it's an accidental concept record tracing the highs and lows of a night out.

"The whole theme didn't come until we listened to the record," he explains.

"It was Paul (Thomson, drummer) who said 'Every song seems to be about a night out, so let's call the album Tonight and structure it'.

"It's more in the order and dynamic of the record, starting from when you psych yourself up through the events of the night to the climax where you come up to a peak and then the comedown afterwards."
 
Manifesto

Effortlessly charming, when they bust out of the traps in 2003, with the valiant manifesto to make music for girls to dance to and a near-perfect self-titled debut album ("It's not perfect," protests Kapranos. "It has lots of flaws."), the Glasgow quartet made being an intelligent rock band look charmingly effortless.

They were Mercury winners, the first breakthrough artist for Domino records and caused indie boys up and down the land to don skinny ties.

Yet titbits leaked to the press during Tonight's prolonged gestation period suggested that Franz Ferdinand were experiencing something of an identity crisis.

There were rumours that they were poised to pursue an Afrobeat direction (false) and of scrapped recording sessions with Erol Alkan, James Ford and, most high profile of all, Girls Aloud's pop-writing powerhouse Xenomania - a move which had the potential to be a Blondie-goes-disco barrier-breaking moment in pop history.

"It's very difficult for Xenomania to step outside the methods of working where you write songs for the artists you produce," says Kapranos of the doomed sessions.

"So it wasn't just the production ideas, they were also suggesting writing ideas. It ended up like asking another band to write your album for you."

Ambient-direction

After experimenting with an ambient-direction ("We played a couple of the songs out live and it wasn't really turning us on," he admits), they finally alighted on producer Dan Carey, bunkered themselves in a dilapidated Victorian town hall in Glasgow and ended up with a album that sounds like.... well, Franz Ferdinand really, albeit with obligatory 2009 synthesisers and the emphasis more on the dancefloor, an evolution of their sound rather than the much-expected revolution.

Given that they were rattling through producers and engaged in a constant game of genre spin-the-bottle, did their label ever try to intervene or, in these belt-tightening times, mention the cost?

"No, they were encouraging it," insists Kapranos. "In some ways, I'd have rather we recorded the LP ourselves and we probably will next time. It didn't cost that much either, only a couple of days with each fella. Not exactly Chinese Democracy."

Sophomore

That it even exists is perhaps something of an achievement. In 2006, while extensively touring sophomore album You Could Have It So Much Better, the group weren't just taking their constructivist artwork from the USSR, they were also applying its work ethic. By the end of the year, they were both exhausted and creatively eviscerated.

"I was pretty turned off at that point," says Kapranos. "I feel like I shouldn't moan about it because it's an amazing thing, getting to do all this stuff.

"When I think back to when I was working as a chef, that was exhausting. So I don't want to moan about it. But I think it was more that we were creatively exhausted after being on the road for all that time.

"Also, I think you have to remove yourself from the world of being a band on tour because there isn't anything worthwhile for inspiration there. It's an artificial world and I wanted to connect and be part of the real world again."

Rather than rushing head-first into album number three, the arch dukes took a break and went their separate ways. Kapranos headed to Vancouver to do some production work for The Cribs, guitarist/keyboardist Nick McCarthy went to South America, sole Scottish member Paul Thomson concentrated on raising a family and bassist Bob Hardy toyed with making a film.
 
Vital

The hiatus, says Kapranos, was vital.

"I wouldn't say that we became sick of ourselves but you do become over-familiar," he says.

"And you become over-familiar with each other. It's like when you move into a flat with your best pals, the things that appeal to you about them can be overshadowed by their little annoying ticks and habits that aren't relevant. So you really do need to have breaks from each other in order to appreciate each other's company."

Added to that, the musical landscape the band have returned to is vastly different from the one they left.

The post-punk revival Franz helped instigate has long been running on empty, with landfill indie bands such as Scouting For Pigeon Detectives & The Jing Jang Jong souring the record buying public on boys-with-guitars, and a clutch of arty electro acts perceived as the future of pop.

In 2009, Franz find themselves in the unusual position of being forced to justify their existence.

"Sometimes a fresh scene becomes stale through repetition," shrugs Kapranos.

"I'm sure that a lot of those bands that are being referred to as landfill indie (he hates the term) formed believing their music was special and unique - a lot has to do with the production and shaping of the bands' sound and image by major labels. Young bands can be moulded to meet a perceived market demand.

"I guess that's where your strength of character is tested," he continues. "Knowing when to tell the people who claim to have your best interests at heart to p*** off. Anyway, the guitar's just an instrument.

"All it needs is a good tune, some original ideas and the right attitude for it to be exciting again. The press was saying guitar bands were finished when Buddy Holly died. Then the Beatles appeared."

Toiled away

Kapranos has partly learnt this from experience. He had toiled away in numerous Glasgow bands and was in his thirties - positively pensionable in pop terms - before hitting the big time. "I'd fallen in all those pits with previous bands," he says. "From creative differences to drugs hell, from jazz odysseys to punch-ups on the M6. Still," he smiles, "I hope we've retained the capacity to **** it all up. It'd be too easy if we hadn't."

In rock, bands have always been encouraged to hide their copy of Proust under a Playboy. Yet Franz have always worn their intelligence on their sleeves.

Literate and erudite, they've previously written songs inspired by Bulgakov's satirical comic novel The Master and Margarita and even had a Oprah-rivalling book club up and running through their MySpace.

Tonight's opening salvo, Ulysses, meanwhile, takes its name from an impenetrable James Joyce novel.

Portrayed

"It's often inaccurate when musicians are portrayed as dumb," argues Kapranos.

"Whenever I read a Noel Gallagher interview, he seems extremely articulate and well informed, yet Oasis are often portrayed as thick.

"It's a critic's cliché - that the musician is some kind of noble savage, an idiot savant who would be nothing without their interpretation. B*******!"

It's not the only misconception, claims Kapranos.

"Gang Of Four didn't influence us," he says. "About six months after our first record came out, their name started appearing in association with us, yet none of us had ever mentioned them.

"It seemed weird. Then they brought out that cash-in LP and it made sense: they'd made the full transition from politico-poseur youth to oppportuno-capitalist middle age.

"There's nothing wrong about that - people get families, settle down, mellow out, whatever - but their claim that they were an influence was dishonest."

All of Franz Ferdinand have side-projects, with Kapranos famously publishing a book of his broadsheet food columns, detailing what he ate on their last world tour.

With that in mind, would he ever consider following in the footsteps of Christopher Biggins and Abi Titmuss by appearing on Celebrity Come Dine With Me?

"Is that a real thing?" he asks. "It sounds amazing-stroke-awful. None of us are into that celebrity stuff. I'd hate to think that anyone thought of me as a celebrity. I'd hope it was just that guy from that band'.

"Actually, the most surreal thing we turned down was a garden party at the Palace.

"Musicians should challenge the establishment, not sip tea with them."

Tonight: Franz Ferdinand is out now through Domino records.