Franz Ferdinand
26/01/2009
Art-rock heroes talk about their new album & show-off their Glasgow HQ
by Jim Butler
Situated in south Glasgow overlooking the River Clyde, the dramatic building formerly known as Govan Town Hall is a magnificent and yet curious edifice. By dint of its imposing size it manages to exemplify Victorian grandeur (completed in 1901, it’s said to be a stunning example of the Beaux-Arts neoclassical architectural style), and yet when compared to the ultra-modernist BBC building and Sir Norman Foster’s Clyde Auditorium (dubbed the Armadillo by locals) across the river, there’s an unmistakeable sadness to its faded majesty.
Following Govan’s fiercely contested assimilation into the city of Glasgow in 1912, the building took on a number of guises until it
seemed to unceremoniously ground to a halt sometime in the 1970s – an impression only strengthened by the garish brown carpets and
retro flock wallpaper inside.
However, deep in the building’s bowels something is stirring. Corridors accessed by a side entrance on Summertown Road (the red-brick wall of which has in place a frieze with the words music and drama above it) lead to an avenue of dimly lit rooms where Franz Ferdinand have spent the best part of two years fashioning their third album, Tonight: Franz Ferdinand, in turn bringing to life their own unique brand of music and drama.
“Playing here has been fun,” confirms the band’s affable whippet-thin frontman Alex Kapranos. “It’s what being in a band should be about: you’re allowing a child-like quality to run amok.
Moreover, studios, proper studios I mean, can be intimidating. There’s a sense of expectation. Here we had fun searching for a sound.”
The rest of the band – Nick McCarthy, Paul Thomson and Bob Hardy – heartily concur.
Thomson points to the ease with which they adapted to their surroundings (“It’s our own den,” he says, again evoking the arrested adolescence prevalent in all bands), while the perma-beaming McCarthy talks about how the warmth of the rooms in their labyrinthine enclave affected the sound of Tonight.
It’s clearly a perfect fit between band and environment. Elsewhere in the building, renovation work takes place – award-winning film production company Sigma Films (Hallam Foe) is based here – and it’s this harmonious mix of the modern and the sepia-tinted that best encapsulates Franz Ferdinand. Always a band comfortable with repurposing older sounds and mixing it with modern techniques (witness the playfully sculptured post-punk, art rock of their eponymous, Mercury and Brit Award-winning debut album, and their new wave, guitar-driven follow-up, You Could Have It So Much Better With… Franz Ferdinand), their new album is no different. Yet those expecting more of the same are in for a surprise: the Franz Ferdinand of 2009 are a very different proposition from when we last saw them.
After four years of non-stop writing, recording and playing from 2003 onwards, the band needed a break. Despite always appearing to be an outfit cut from a different cloth to a million-and-one identikit “indie” acts, even they are ready to confirm the rock ‘n’roll cliché that familiarity, particularly
while on tour leading an essentially peripatetic existence, can lead to contempt.
“We could have made a record three months after we’d finished touring the second one but it would have been a brittle, shallow version of the other two records,” says Alex. “And it wouldn’t have been particularly much fun to make. We’d have probably ended up killing each other.” Thankfully, following a brief three-month sojourn at the end of 2006, when the band reconvened in their new creative space in Govan, the four of them
were eager to start work and eager to try and explore new ideas.
“We wanted a new sonic identity,” confirms Alex. “And if that came quickly it would have probably been contrived. I suppose that’s part of the reason we chose a place like this – hiding ourselves in a former industrial part of Glasgow in an old Victorian building that nobody really goes to. It was kind of pretending to the rest of the world that we didn’t really exist.” So away from prying eyes Franz Ferdinand went about the process of, if not exactly reinventing themselves, certainly adding a new versatility to their sound.
There was a year of blind alleys, mistakes, improvisation, small gigs in Glasgow road testing material, intense internet rumours speculating about their new direction (it’s afrobeat, no it’s not, it’s synth-pop…) and, finally, a brief but very public flirtation with Girls Aloud. Well, their Svengali-type puppet master producer Brian Higgins.
In their open-minded quest for this “new sonic identity” it was announced Franz Ferdinand would be working with Xenomania, the production team behind Cheryl, Nadine and co. On paper it seemed a perfect fit: Franz Ferdinand have never been shy about declaring their love for all things pop and Xenomania, with Higgins at the helm, are the most inventive pop practitioners extant. Unfortunately, it soon became apparent it wasn’t going to work. Xenomania had their tried-and-tested methods of working, and Franz Ferdinand had theirs.
“I think we were a bit deluded,” laughs Paul Thomson, looking back on the aborted sessions. “We thought there was no difference between us and Girls Aloud. In reality, there’s a world of difference.” For the first time today, Alex begins to squirm uncomfortably. It transpires he’s fed up of being quizzed about the experience.
“Everyone wants to talk about Brian Higgins,” he moans. “I find this fascinating, you know. There was a session with James Ford [Simian Mobile
Disco and producer of Arctic Monkeys and Klaxons among others] as well. There was a session with Erol Alkan [DJ and producer], there were lots of sessions, but most importantly there was a session that worked really well with Dan Carey [the album’s eventual knob-twiddler].
“It was fun and stimulating,” he says, referring to the Xenomania sessions, “but we just weren’t compatible really. I think people always assume there’s a manifesto with us. I think the Russian imagery on the first two albums might have played a part in that: you know, they probably thought we had a Soviet-style Five Year Plan,” he strokes his “beard” for effect. “But we don’t. We eventually stumbled upon a sound that worked.”
Synth-heavy tracks like first single ‘Ulysses’ and ‘No You Girls’ have their freshly polished winkle pickers in new and old incarnations of Franz Ferdinand, ably demonstrated by the thrilling reaction when they headlined Latitude last summer.
“It’s a fun record,” says Thomson proudly. “It’s definitely a night-time record, all the life-changing occurrences happen at night don’t they? You could put it on at a house party. It’s a good party record like Parallel Lines [Blondie] or Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours. Saying that, I always end up listening to Kate Bush at parties these days.”
The track that best exhibits their newfound musical wanderlust, and which in turn reveals the album’s fascination with nefarious activities that occur after dark, is ‘Lucid Dreams’. Originally given away as a free download last year, the band returned to the song, adding on four extra minutes of propulsive electronic acid squelching.
It sounds like nothing Franz Ferdinand have recorded before. Funnily enough, its dancefloor qualities have already polarised fans – like members of Kapranos’s immediate family.
“I played it to my wee sister and she said it was amazing, the best thing we’d ever done,” he recalls. “And then my mum said, ‘I really love your new album, Alexander, but there’s one song that goes on for a bit and it reminds me of those awful songs on Beatles records’. I think she was talking about ‘Revolution 9’. But that’s good. Some will be surprised by it and others, who know us quite well, won’t.”
Ultimately, Franz Ferdinand have made the bold decision to surprise themselves, and their fans, and in these lean times for adventurous guitar rock/pop that should be applauded. Anyway, the band seem revitalised.
“I think if we tried to play that frantic backbeat, disco hi-hat with those thin guitars continuously for the next 30 years we’d go insane,” says Kapranos. “It’d be dreary. That’s why I like the perversity and contrariness of this band.”
“Playing at events like Africa Express takes us out of our comfort zone,” says Thomson. “Because, you know, we’re still trying to discover what band we are. Have we discovered who we are? No, and I don’t want to know.”
Outside, above the main entrance to the building Franz Ferdinand now call home, is inscribed the erstwhile Govan Burgh coat of arms. Recalling the days when the shipyards of Govan built the most important boats of the time, it reads “Nihl sine labore”. It translates as “nothing without work”. It’s a maxim Franz Ferdinand would no doubt endorse.
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