Franz Ferdinand - The Princes of Remake-Remodel

Alex Kapranos and Bob Hardy came to Milan for a promo day at the end of November 2017, and we were honoured to meet them in person. Their answers reveal the creative urgency and passion that still drive their work after all these years.

For us long-time Italian fans, one of our best memories of the band are the first two shows in small clubs back in spring 2004. I can't expect you to remember the specifics of those gigs, but maybe you can recall something about that…

Alex: oh, I do have memories! We played Milan and Bologna. I remember Bologna well, the venue was a former squat, I loved that place and its history. And we played in a hot, sweaty room, I have very fond memories of that show. I remember being really struck by being in Italy and playing those shows, and how intense the crowd was. I also remember the Milan show, because there was a huge fight outside the club, the club was on a lower floor and was really big, and the fight happened afterwards, a guy got stabbed and was walking around and all his blood ended up on our shirts, it reminded me a bit of Saturday nights in Glasgow. I remember that show well too, those moments really do stay with you.

Can you tell me something in general about those months spent touring small clubs? It's something that never really happened again, since you almost immediately started playing bigger venues.

Alex: small clubs were a brief period for this band, but I spent ten years touring small clubs myself, even smaller than the ones we played with Franz Ferdinand. I loved those shows, and we still play them every now and then, we did one in Paris recently. It's exciting when you're starting out, because it's supposed to be your first time, so every single show is special. I remember them very well, because, like I said, they stay with you.

Now we can talk about the new album — first I'd like to ask if you want to say something about a thought I had. I think you can either like or dislike Franz Ferdinand, but you can't argue with the fact that on every album the band has tried to do something different, and at the same time, after just a couple of seconds, every listener understands it's Franz Ferdinand.

Alex: that's really what we think is important as a band, but especially right now. We're in a new decade, so it's not just about the difference between albums, but also between different eras for the band, the end of one chapter and the start of a new one. It's a completely new decade for the band's existence, and since the line-up has changed a bit, that allowed us to redirect what we were doing and say, "OK, where are we going now? What can we do that's new?" But, still, keeping our DNA, our identity, intact.

I noticed something new in the songwriting on this record — you've always written some verse-chorus-verse songs and some that are, instead, something different. I think that, on this album, you've done a lot more different things compared to your other albums, and some songs are very, very far from the verse-chorus-verse structure, especially "Lois Lane", which is really unconventional.

Bob: as a music lover, this is the type of song I prefer to listen to. I think part of the reason this came out on this album is that we gave ourselves a lot of time to come up with ideas and put them together — for some songs we had so many melodies, so many ideas, they were built like Frankenstein's monster, and part of that is down to the space and time we gave ourselves to write.

Alex: it always starts from the ideas, you don't do something new just because you're using an instrument you'd never used before — I think a lot of bands make that mistake. Everything has to start from the ideas about what you want to sing about, what you want to do, how you want to make people feel, what you've already done before — and then structures, yes, I like structures in songs. When I was young I loved songs like "Oh Well" by Fleetwood Mac, "Breakfast Time" by Orange Juice, "Live And Let Die" — Paul McCartney is a master of the unconventional song, the song that, by the time it's over, you can't remember how it started because it's turned into something completely different. I love things like that.

Talking about the sound, I noticed it's not something new for you, since you've already used a bit of electronics in the past, but I think here it plays a much bigger role.

Alex: I think there have always been synths and keyboards, ever since our very first single "Darts Of Pleasure", but you're right, the sound here is different. I think we've always wanted to be a band that makes dance music, and plays it live like a rock'n'roll band, and I think this record is the culmination of that idea — we've pushed it much further than we ever had before. The other day I was on the radio, and they played "Always Ascending" and "Love Illumination" back to back, and "Love Illumination" sounds great, but also much more like a rock band, whereas with this record, I don't even know exactly what it is, and I think that's a beautiful thing. My biggest regret is that we never came up with a name for this genre — we could call it "natural futurism", the sound reflects exactly what we wanted to do, which is music played by human beings that looks to the future. I'd love to be able to come up with a name for this genre, because at the end of the day we're all boxed in by genres — maybe, instead of "natural futurism", we could call it "future naturalism".

I'd like to ask you something about the rhythm — I think it's particularly different from the past, maybe in relation to your intention of being more danceable.

Bob: when we were writing, we used sequences, drums, and bass parts, and we wrote them on computer or other devices, and then we brought them into the context of a live band, we played them live, and so you end up writing things you wouldn't naturally come up with just using instruments in a live setup, because when you use a different interface, things change. I think it was a really effective thing for us.

I like the harmonies on "The Academy Awards", I think you can relate them to the ones on "Eleanor Put Your Boots On", and I really like the way you put together this kind of harmony, but you do it pretty rarely.

Alex: I've always loved harmonies, and putting them together. There are some in "The Dark Of The Matinée", and there are a couple of other examples of that. It hasn't happened much in the past, because Paul and Nick would have had to sing them, and Paul had sung a bit in a band before, but Nick had never sung, and I think they were scared of the idea of too many harmonies, so they'd sing the same line I was singing. So, we always kept things simple, but now Julian is in the band, and he can do harmonies literally with his eyes closed, and he has a very different voice from mine, a really high, pure voice, and the combination of our two voices brings a lot of richness, which then works well alongside Paul and Dino's voices live. Songs like "Always Ascending" we play live with four-part harmonies — we'd never done that before and it's really great.

Do you have a set process for writing songs — is there a songwriting session, do you jam together in the studio, how does it work?

Alex: for this record, there's a different method for almost every song. Different starting points, different methods. "Always Ascending" started with the musical idea of a chord progression that never resolves, "Lois Lane" with the creation of two fictional characters.

Bob: I think every album has had different starting points.

If we talk about lyrics, do you think it's possible to sum up some general concepts that apply to all of them, or does each one have its own identity?

Alex: I'd say our lyrics are about what it means to be a human being today. For instance, the working title of this album was “Sex And Death”…

Now, obviously, everyone's expecting a lot from your shows, given the line-up change and the expanded sound.

Alex: actually, we've already played quite a lot this year, we did an American tour and the European festivals, it's been really great. It's nice having harmonies on stage, extra musicians, Dino plays guitars and Julian moves between keyboards and guitars. The old material sounds fresher and we really love the new stuff. There's also a great vibe within the band and we're enjoying hanging out with people after the shows.

How many new songs have you already played?

Alex: back in September we started with four, in the most recent dates we got up to eight. They were small shows, but I think that by now, for anyone who wants to hear the songs, they're out there.

Bob: there are fans with bootleg versions of the new songs we've played.

Why don't you ever play “Darts Of Pleasure” live?

Alex: we do play it! At that first show in Bologna, we definitely played it, I remember it, it was the last song.

OK, but from the second album onwards…

Alex: we've played it a few times, I'm pretty sure we played it at a show near Florence, because a guy requested it from the crowd and we played it. So, next time you come see us, get down to the front rows and shout out the title!

Bob: you can request any song we know how to play, even B-sides or covers. We might play “Womanizer” again…

Alex: some songs you play once in a lifetime, others you play more often.

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