Franz Ferdinand - The Princes of Remake-Remodel

Exploding right in the middle of the nu new wave epoch, Scotland's Franz Ferdinand are the new princes of the 2000s' remake-remodel aesthetic. The name is a direct reference to the Archduke of Austria whose assassination in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914 triggered the First World War. Curious, certainly, and meant to underline the almost Weberian irreplaceability of historical events, the importance of single small occurrences that change the course of thousands of lives. But it's their musical DNA that marks Franz Ferdinand out as one of the most interesting pop-rock outfits of the last decade: an essential, plastic, well-oiled rhythm section, guitars unleashed yet perfectly tamed, choruses harmonized just right, a clever alternation of pauses and impetuous surges; presiding over it all is the mock-dandy Alex Kapranos, a vocalist and composer of rare precision and effectiveness. A cocktail that strikes for its freshness, to the point of making you believe the remake might actually be better than the original.

The members of Franz Ferdinand could already boast a fair amount of experience built up during the '90s, in outfits like The Karelia, Yummy Fur, 10p Invaders and Embryo. Kapranos, in particular, carved out a role for himself as a songwriter after his stint in Yummy Fur, and in 2001 met guitarist Nick McCarthy. The two of them became the axis around which Franz Ferdinand took shape in Glasgow (with Robert Hardy on vocals and bass, and Paul Thomson on drums).

In May 2003 the band signed to Domino Records, and towards the end of that year released their debut EP, Darts Of Pleasure, which was well received, reaching number 43 on the UK Chart and winning the "Philip Hall Radar Award" at the 2004 NME Awards.

It was a time of heavy tribute and citation. A long wave coming from America (Strokes, Kills, Interpol) following in the footsteps of vintage post-punk, but also attempting genetic mutations of its own (as in the case of Rapture, who tried to blend Gang Of Four with the new dance music). A fashionable revival for some, a substantial one for others, with the soul of Ian Curtis and the heart of Tom Verlaine taking shape once again. And so came the ranks of neo-punk-funk, played out in every possible variation. The charts were moving for real, and the start of the Noughties turned into a flurry of front pages devoted to whichever was the wave big thing of the moment. Britain, with its tried-and-tested pairing of music and image, was never going to sit on the sidelines, and indeed it went all in. So the historic names already partly flagged by Interpol (Psychedelic Furs, Chameleons, Teardrop Explodes and Josef K most cited of all) found their voice again through the music of Editors, Bloc Party and White Lies, while leanings closer to vintage Clash, Stranglers and Fall were revitalised through Art Brut, Kaiser Chiefs, Maximo Park and Arctic Monkeys, in a vigorous web of cross-references.

Franz Ferdinand seized the moment. And they didn't waste the loaded gun of their debut.

For Kapranos and co., the first label (of many) was already waiting: "the Scottish answer to Interpol". And yet the Scots were already setting themselves apart from their fellow nu-wavers, fusing the lessons of post-punk masters like Fall and Talking Heads with a brashness borrowed from garage-rock and glam. All of these traits resurface on their debut album, Franz Ferdinand (2004), made in Sweden through a collaboration with the Cardigans' producers. A record whose compositional exuberance, subtly perverse lyrical irony and occasionally disdainful sonic posture make it a watershed of the year — a two-faced Janus gathering up the past and reframing it while opening the way to the future.

The sense of history, already hinted at by the band's chosen name, remains a dominant trait of the album, yet it is cut through by an elusive, almost Nietzschean will to overcome, to tear down any useless elegiac nostalgia in the name of a robust sound that epically traverses — and surpasses — the musical history of the last century: the Sixties, embodied by the roaring metallic guitars; the Seventies, by the glam-tinged accents of the rhythm (bass and drums joining forces to create an effect as magniloquent and imposing as Bowie's "Low" and "Heroes"); the Eighties, by the melancholy keyboards, so distant yet so close; the Nineties, by a certain foul-mouthed, naïve eccentricity recalling the most anarchic and irreverent side of Pavement.

And yet, there's a sense of something reaching well beyond all this, revealing behind the songs' classic rock catchiness a sonic complexity unknown to other bands the quartet might be compared to (Strokes, Kills), one born of the best British tradition: Smiths, Bauhaus, Clash, alongside certain delightful electronic intrusions of a dance persuasion. All of it in service of an irresistible party music, whose ideal paradigm is the enormously successful single "Take Me Out": a dizzying progression, for instance, that starts off slow and takes flight with an overwhelming off-beat disco rhythm and an impossibly sticky refrain.

The lyrics, dancing along to the music as though driven by some fatal inevitability ("they have to be there, and no other way"), are bound together by the overarching theme of the creative madness spawned by love in its most Satanic, murkiest forms — recalling both the perverse transgressions of Mick Jagger and the abyssal depths of the early Nick Cave: just listen to the descents into hell of "Matinee" and "This Fire", driven by a headlong rhythm and, as ever, relentless guitars.

We run up against the almost nullifying power of the other's gaze (Sartre) in "Jacqueline", the resigned loneliness of "Tell Her Tonight", the eternal damnation born of sin in "Auf Achse" ("It's with your sins that you have killed me"), the platonic lust of "Darts Of Pleasure", the sweeping homosexual love of the irresistible "Michael".

A robust sound dominates throughout, imperiously restless and never tired, megalomaniacally pleased and satisfied with itself. Even if they themselves claim to be just a band who want to "make girls dance"... But it's best not to listen to them, nor to all those who, with a touch of snobbery, will say that originality is in short supply on Franz Ferdinand, even coining new labels like "emul-rock". They're lying. They haven't glimpsed the infinite beyond the hedge, or at least the bounded but thrilling spaces that lie just past it.

As it happens, the record was a smash, climbing to number three on the UK Chart and selling over a million copies in the US too, earning a Platinum disc, along with numerous international accolades, including the Mercury Music Prize, an Ivor Novello Award, two Brit Awards and an MTV award for best video for "Take Me Out".

Altogether, Franz Ferdinand would go on to sell more than three and a half million copies: one of the rare breakout hits worth remembering in these lean chart times, but also a success that grew in direct proportion to the grumbling of those who belatedly sniffed out the unmistakable (?) scent of a reviled commercial operation.

On 17 February 2005, at the NME Awards, Kapranos thanked the "great bands" who had inspired Franz Ferdinand's songwriting, citing (somewhat surprisingly) Oasis, Depeche Mode, New Order and Pet Shop Boys.

In October of that same year, the much-awaited second act arrived in stores, You Could Have It So Much Better (2005), which immediately set itself apart from its hugely successful predecessor: where Franz Ferdinand was good-naturedly noisy, this one is more controlled; where before there were loosely defined blends of rock and dance, here we find songs with a sharper identity (and watch out, there are even two ballads!), while in place of the artfully scruffy aplomb there is now a near-obsessive attention to production. The songwriting too heads in other directions, which is why it takes a few more listens to realise the hits are still there — they just seem engineered to reach as wide an audience as possible.

You Could Have It So Much Better is, in any case, still a thoroughly crowd-pleasing record. For one thing, there are plenty of pop-rock Olympus-dwellers paid tribute to through explicit quotation, or at least a knowing wink, and for another the guiding thread still favours carefree, party-ready abandon — the true trademark of the Glasgow lads — over any kind of intellectual ambition. So while it's an easy-going, dressed-down Blur peeking through on opener "The Fallen", it's the ever-popular post-punk-funk groove that permeates "The Boy", while the Pulp of "Different Class" get dragged in by the hair on the catchy off-beat of "Walk Away", and even more so on "I'm Your Villain", which somehow finds room to namecheck even the goofiest Rolling Stones of "Miss You" via its guitar riff.

The explicit nods to the 60s British Invasion in the chorus of "Well That Was Easy" are only thinly disguised by the tempo changes that, this time, really do call back to the lucky run of the debut, while the Kinks-meets-Beatles contamination flooding "Eleanor Put Your Boots On" and "Fade Together" (what a soppy title!) is blatant — and yet they remain two thoroughly classy ballads. Amid the hubbub of acknowledgements, there's still room on the title track for Fall, in a version that's not even all that light, as well as, on "Outsiders", the evergreen Talking Heads, already cheerfully namechecked more than once on the first record.

Just pale clone-imitators, you might finally ask? No, sirs: Franz Ferdinand have their own fair share of substance, that's for sure; whether they can be liked without reservation is an entirely different matter.

In today's complicated record market, in short, Kapranos and co. found themselves in the right current and enjoyed decent success, splitting fans over their actual merits. Loved by champions of real music and hated by champions of real music – a concept that evidently lends itself to more than one interpretation – the Scots kept rowing against contemporary conventions, taking a very long break right at their golden moment.

Tonight: Franz Ferdinand (2009) is the fruit of the band's self-destructive urge: aware of the danger of singing their own praises, they try to give the public something new. Geometrizing the racket of their debut, finding a sound that's something other than pure guitar-strumming, avoiding the hodgepodge effect of You Could Have It So Much Better: the 2009-vintage Franz Ferdinand are no longer four kids with guitars, but true musicians who've found cohesion, both in terms of chemistry and sheer sonic body. The most obvious novelty is the heavy use of electronics, but that's not the only thing that's changed. Essentially Franz Ferdinand remain a somewhat atypical rock party band, because what scores points is still the heavy hand on the strings more than the groove. What's gone missing, though, is that certain guitar-driven dominance of the past, and the attitude has become far more funky.

The new album also boasts interesting, carefully crafted arrangements. Of course, the pursuit of immediate impact remains an unwavering priority: the choral use of voices and the danceable stride of the opening bombshell "Ulysses" give life to a three-minute track as brazen as they come. The point is that Franz Ferdinand today are no longer just that: the delicate beach-pop melody of "Send Him Away" – built on electric guitar arpeggios and keyboards – and the deliciously British and over-the-top "Twilight Omens" – with its ominous piano figure and bursts of guitar – have nothing more than a passing kinship with rock. Among the various technical advances, special praise goes to Kapranos's voice: raw, knowing, full of nuance (above all on "Ulysses" and "What She Came For"). The band's newfound mastery is evident in how a track can still sound jagged even while having found a polished form ("Bite Hard", an explosive gallop driven by jolts of electric guitar and synth, complete with a huge closing solo), and in how the mix makes ideas that aren't exactly brand new (the tribal disco-funk of "Can't Stop Feeling") sound enticing. The limits of the formula only emerge when the band strays from its solid rock foundation: the disco of "Live Alone" feels somewhat prefabricated, while the epic sweep of "Lucid Dreams" still sounds pretentious, even if it does deliver a good electronic coda.

The overall balance, despite a dip in the album's second half due to some weaker songs, is satisfying: the Scots turn out a solid work, eclectic enough to range from a pastoral voice-and-acoustic piece ("Katherine Kiss Me") to a venomous, sensual electric funk number ("Turn It On") without ever coming apart or losing internal cohesion.

The artistic dignity Franz Ferdinand display on Tonight is a fine slap in the face to all their prejudiced detractors.

Another four years go by and, with Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action (2013), Kapranos & co. reprint, for the umpteenth time, the thesaurus of danceable pop, putting guitars back in the front row, giving the classic irresistible chants a polish, and restarting the quotation machine – a device that, in the hands of those who know what they're doing, turns into the exact opposite of copying. A generous half-hour of winks, hooks, dududu and dadada (with everyone mocking that unlikeable Sting, 33 years on) is enough, with the dances rendered efficiently and sparingly by Paul Thomson's excellent timing, who behind the kit definitively brings back the synthetic funk-dance drummer, erasing the sloppy misdeeds of his britpop peers. And so, like an endless drum roll, come the skips of "Right Action", the clever revisiting of the Specials on "Evil Eye", the robotic rhythms of "Love Illumination" with its tasty synth trimmings, the compulsive little riffs of "Stand On The Horizon", the progressively wilder and increasingly feverish build of "Bullet" and "Treasons! Animal", and the melancholy, naively Sixties romanticism of "Fresh Strawberries" and "Brief Encounters".

It may be the same old story repeating itself, but Ferdinand once again prove themselves masters of remake-remodel, thanks above all to the steady hand of Kapranos, disguised as the life-of-the-party pal who, in the end, sees off guests, lovers and friends; the farewell goes to a little game built on a double foundation, guitars à la "The Passenger" and hip-hop noises, with a drone humming underneath, while the man himself smirkingly declares "Don't play pop music, You know, I hate pop music", and all around, with unfailing sarcasm, we move from ballad to stadium chant, between bursts of speed and moments of calm; a veritable summary of the party that someone swears might run a little longer than planned, in spite of the usual boring neighbours.

Then you step out into the first light of dawn and run toward that longed-for coffee: a sugarless Franz Ferdinand, not that it matters, the more you knock back the more it picks you up. And the cycle starts again.

In 2015 comes the collaboration you weren't expecting. It all starts with a chance encounter in Los Angeles: Alex Kapranos runs into the masters of a lifetime, brothers Ron and Russell Mael, known to friends as Sparks. "For fuck's sake!" could well be the phrase that slipped out of his mouth in that fateful moment. Shortened to "FFS", it would become the title of the first record credited to Franz Ferdinand + Sparks. Almost a dream come true, considering it was precisely from a (botched) cover of Sparks's "Achoo" that the Scots took their very first steps.

The two bands trade tapes across six thousand miles, back and forth between London and Los Angeles. In the end, 12 songs emerge, produced by John Congleton (St. Vincent, Anna Calvi, David Byrne) and recorded at Rak Studios in London.

The cold fusion of FFS, it must be said right away, works. Sure, Franz Ferdinand pay a certain toll to the Mael brothers and their roaring nonsense-cabaret, made of glam pantomime and Broadway-style parades. But the Sparks' balm restores vitality to a formula that, after the dazzling debut, had lost some of its shine. More than the individual tracks, what shines is the sound itself, an amalgam of glam, synth-pop, art-rock and (nu?) new wave, through which the amused, larky spirit animating the whole project shines through. There's no shortage of memorable songs, either. Starting with "Johnny Delusional", released as the first single, in which the two souls really do seem to merge perfectly: the theatre of the absurd of the geniuses behind "This Town Ain't Big Enough For Both Of Us" and the intoxicating chord progressions à la "Take Me Out", with saturated keyboards and scratchy guitars framing the tale of a romantic loser. The fusion returns in an even bolder form in the hybrid beast that is "Save Me From Myself": half Sparksian melodrama (the intro, the little choruses, the art-rock openings), half party at Kapranos's house (the skipping rhythm, the neurotic guitars, the full-throated singing).

More typically FF is the swaggering "Call Girl", where the Scots take centre stage with one of their trademark full-throttle dance numbers, and the equally lively "Police Encounters", enhanced by the lovely dialogue between the two voices in the refrain. The pantomime of "Dictator's Son", a sardonic parable of the offspring of an exotic despot, is instead entirely Mael-branded.

But the joint venture doesn't simply return the sum of its two parts. Genuinely original results also surface, such as "Little Guy From The Suburbs", one of those pitch-black atmospheric ballads that Tindersticks haven't managed to pull off in quite some time. Or "So Desu Ne", a laboratory Frankenstein of a Kimono My House twisted into electropop and stuffed full of ecstasy. But the peak of experimental daring is the mini-opera "Collaborations Don't Work", almost seven minutes of pure delirium that seem to have sprung from a 1970s off-Broadway musical: it ranges from soft languor to dizzying staccato bursts, from art-rock orchestral openings to jazz-funk pastiche, from pulsing synths to Ron's delicate closing piano coda, with that refrain "I'm gonna do it all by myself" ringing out more mocking than ever. Just as mocking is the closing "Piss Off", an anthem to a reclusive, nonconformist life that sounds almost like a manifesto for Sparks's entire career.

FFS points to a new road for the Scottish band to travel, with a little help from their old Californian friends, with whom they also went on tour together. It will be up to them to decide whether to keep following it in their future work.

The next step after this fine collaborative project was a lineup change, both in terms of personnel and structure. Nick McCarthy, in fact, announced his decision to focus on family life and a small musical project with his wife called Box Codax, and was replaced by Dino Bardot and Julian Corrie: the former on guitar, coming from 1990s, while the latter, already behind the electropop project Miaoux Miaoux, added a permanent keyboardist to the band. After a 2017 marked by numerous live dates, Always Ascending was released on February 9, 2018.

The events described above inevitably shaped the nature of this fifth album, not just in terms of sound but also in the compositional structure of the songs. These 10 tracks have a broader scope on both fronts. The sound is far more infused with electronics than in the past and shows off much more nuance, variety and attention to detail, including in the rhythmic department; the songwriting still revolves around the classic song form, but never fully adheres to it, offering some tracks where verse and chorus are just one part of a larger discourse, and others that resemble genuine melodic streams of consciousness.

Alongside these changes, some still very present traits make it easy to trace the album back to Franz Ferdinand. The melodic touch, the vocal timbre and the interplay between guitars and rhythm section are such that one can speak of renewal within continuity for the band.

Broadening their sonic and compositional horizons has undoubtedly done the band good, not only because, as mentioned, there's a greater wealth of ideas and inspiration, but above all because, qualitatively, the results are consistently up to par. Every song has certain qualities that are invariably enjoyable and make listening to the album an experience full of different moods and situations. You immediately find yourself tapping your foot and nodding along to the opening title track, you let yourself be carried away by the languid crescendo of the following "Lazy Boy", you sway pleasantly through the refreshing keyboards and interwoven vocal lines of "Paper Cages", you smile at the warm, harmonious caress that is "The Academy Award", you lose yourself just as happily in the enigmatic flow of "Lois Lane", and so on.

After releasing — at a time when almost no one does this anymore — a greatest hits titled Hits To The Head, with a couple of new tracks, Franz Ferdinand return with their long-awaited and much-delayed sixth studio effort (not counting their brief adventure with Sparks in the mid-2010s). The Human Fear (2025) is, according to Alex Kapranos, a concept album aimed at the "pursuit of the thrill within human beings through fear". The result is 11 new songs spanning 35 minutes of music. Not a long album, but on the whole a successful one that certainly won't disappoint fans. Let's be clear: Franz Ferdinand no longer have the energy of twenty years ago, as one might expect. And the drive behind their post-punk revival formula, with its powerful guitar textures combined with an unleashed rock'n'roll style, has clearly faded over the years. What we have instead is a mature, reflective band, and if you will, one less "hasty" in recording and performing songs that clearly answer to a vision, not to fan expectations or to whatever trends or styles happen to be in fashion.

Partly for this reason, though, the album at times sounds "lukewarm", without too many jolts. Still, there are standout moments worth highlighting. "Hooked", an unsettling song about love and obsession, is certainly the peak, recalling some of their other productions with "dark" atmospheres, like "Evil Eye" (2013). Also notable are the Beatles-esque "Audacious", which opens the tracklist; the elegant, baroque (yet still rock) "Build It Up"; and the martial post-punk of "Black Eyelashes" — all tracks that could rightfully sit among Franz Ferdinand's more classic albums, say the first two. Also remarkable is the closing "The Birds", a climax with a wall of sound that brings the record to a more than fitting close.

In substance, the formula employed by the British band is the one we're used to: guitar-driven post-punk, yes, but increasingly nuanced, not so much hybridized as "tempered", which gains little from outside influences but, in exchange, evolves into an ever fuller and more assured sound, leaving little room for hesitation or detours. And indeed the album is short: even after seven years, what Kapranos and his bandmates have to say, they say in half an hour or so.

After so many years in the business, Franz Ferdinand are increasingly able to preserve the core elements of their stylistic identity while also profitably embracing a process of change that had never been so pronounced. The result is, once again, convincing.

* AA.VV. = Cristian Degano, Marco Bercella, Ciro Frattini, Davide Sechi, Stefano Bartolotta, Andrea Campana

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