Banding together
TOWN BIG ENOUGH FOR BOTH OF US: Russell Mael of Sparks and Alex Kapranos of Franz Ferdinand at Glasgow’s Art School last night for the debut performance of their new band FFS. Picture: Colin Templeton.
Glasgow School Of Art
Neil Cooper
*****
AS concept-driven theatrical art-pop collaborations go, there are few more perfect than this year’s hook-up between rejuvenated glam/disco/ electro oddballs Sparks and Glasgowsired quartet Franz Ferdinand, whose own fusion of dance floor-driven jauntiness and lyrical archness has never shied away from its debt to the Mael brothers fabulist canon.
With a tour pending that includes a sold-out date at this year’s Edinburgh International Festival, it was only fitting that such a super-group made its full live debut at FF’s spiritual alma mater. Fanfared on by the plastic triumphalism of the theme from Blake’s 7, this unholy black-and-white clad alliance gallop into a salvo of songs from this year’s eponymous album, with Franz’s Alex Kapranos and Sparks’ Russell Mael trading vocals and hamming it up on frantic and frenetic future gay club classics like Johnny Delusional as if their lives depended on it.
At moments they are the Swingle Singers, at others wild west troubadours, and, on the gloriously knowing Collaborations Don’t Work, which even makes room for a few shy murmurs from the ever impassive and keyboard-bound Ron Mael and Franz bassist Bob Hardy, like Brechtian divas in drag.
Spookily, on Sparks’ already poignant When Do I Get To Sing My Way?, close your eyes and it could be the late Billy Mackenzie and former Josef K front-man Paul Haig duetting up there. Interspersed with euphoric anthems such as Franz’s Take Me Out and Sparks’ epic This Town Ain’t Big Enough For The Both Of Us, and with a much bigger Glasgow show just announced for Barrowlands on August 26, the end result of such mutual fantasy-wish-fulfilment is a joyous set of post-modern show-tunes for Now people.