One man down, the only way is UP
The name of the new Franz Ferdinand album is Always Ascending. The title sounded apt to these ears as it seemed to epitomise their career. The Glasgow group rose to prominence in the so-called Britpop Two brigade of bands of the mid-noughties with others such as Kaiser Chiefs and Futureheads. But they soared in an artier, less commercial direction when they could easily have exchanged arena tours for stadiums with the success of their first two albums. After the well-received 2013 album Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action they set controls for another journey into the unknown. They formed a supergroup with seventies electro-pop pioneers Sparks called FFS and toured the world to huge acclaim with the resultant album of the same name.
Always Ascending? Yes, that just about sums up Franz Ferdinand.
‘Well, it could have been called Sex And Death!’ Bob Hardy says in a mock-gruff manner. ‘Sex and death seem to appear in all our songs whether we plan it or not.’
Well, there’s something you or I might not have known about songs such as Take Me Out, Dark Of The Matinee or other classics that can still be heard at indie nights over a decade after their release.
It also transpired that I was under a misapprehension about one of the album’s best songs, Paper Cages. It might have been easy to imagine that the repeated line ‘We step out of our cages’ was a reference to founding member Nick McCarthy’s departure from the band in 2016 but, in common with a lot of things about Franz Ferdinand, that would be too easy.
‘We certainly weren’t thinking about Nick leaving on that song,’ he says. ‘There is an AmericanTaiwanese artist called Tehching Hsieh. In the 70s he made himself into an art installation. For a year he lived alone in a cage in his studio. He allowed the public to view him once a month. He got his lawyer to produce a contract to say that he lived in the cage for the year, even when there was no one around. The song is about people thinking they are restricted, that they are in a cage when actually they can they leave it at any time.’
Inspiration for indie earworms can come from many origins.
‘I had taken that story of his work to the band; all of us are very interested in visual art,’ he says.
‘We have a deep love of film. We always try to produce songs that are about an actual thing, an event rather than just talking about relationships all the time.’
Hardy studied at the College of Art in Glasgow. He met singer Alex Kapranos, Nick McCarthy and drummer Paul Thomson while studying in the city.
Two new members, Julian Corrie on keyboards and Dino Bardot on guitar have joined to fill the void left by McCarthy who departed to spend more time with his partner and family.
‘With Nick no longer around, it changed the roles and dynamic for myself, Alex and Paul,’ he says.
‘I’m not making a virtue out of Nick leaving but, in a way, it was freeing. There were patterns of working that developed over the years, then they were gone. It became more of a collaboration between the three of us. Every crisis is an opportunity, or however the saying goes.’
Speaking of opportunities, took a total of 11 years to act on the one to work with Sparks, a band who were an influence on Franz Ferdinand and on many more acts than the handful of hits in the seventies and some quirky Top of the Pops appearances would suggest.
‘We met them in 2004 when we were touring our first record. After more chance meetings we agreed that we should work together in the future. Events took over and they were busy and so were we.’
The arenas were calling to Franz Ferdinand and Sparks were back in vogue due to being name-checked by Morrissey, Franz Ferdinand themselves and others. Still, the collaboration between the two bands seemed highly unlikely. Many thought it was a joke.
‘Well, we made the announcement that we were releasing an album together on an April Fool’s Day (in 2015). That didn’t help,’ Hardy laughs.
‘We had bumped into Ron and Russell again in San Francisco in 2013 and asked each other what ever happened about that idea of working together. We decided there and then to pursue it.’
As Hardy put it: ‘We didn’t do things by halves. We did a song first, then made an album, then formed a band with them and went on tour.’
Hardy would not rule out another collaboration but Always Ascending is the priority for now.
Franz Ferdinand descend upon The Olympia Theatre Dublin tonight. Doors open at 7.30
‘With Nick no longer around, it changed the roles and the dynamic for us’