“We’re literally wrong footing you,” joked Kapranos in anticipation of the set. Moving your body to the song is all but inevitable, but it’s like trying to dance on a boat. It’s totally infectious and yet disorientating at the same time, structured around a 5/4 beat with sporadic spurts of surf guitar and tight vocal harmonies. Corrie, who works under the moniker Miaoux Miaoux when he’s not in Franz Ferdinand, plinks his way through ridiculously catchy new numbers like ‘Paper Cages’ one minute, and joins the ensemble up front on harder-edged songs like the concluding ‘This Fire’, as the four axemen of the apocalypse lead us towards oblivion.īefore all that they open with another new song 'Lazy Boy’, which might be their most accomplished song in years. The addition of Dino Bardot on guitar and perhaps more significantly Julian Corrie as some kind of auxiliary musical polymath, adds a depth to the sound that wasn’t there before. If they’re not as sartorially sharp and Kraftwerkian as they once were, then musically it’s hard to think of a time they cut such a dash. Zdar “moved out of his world where everything is on the grid with everything programmed”, according Kapranos, “bringing a sonic template of now, of 2018, with a raw band at the heart of it.” Zdar is no doubt happy with his handiwork, because he’s not only present tonight, but he comes out ahead of the show to introduce the band.įranz Ferdinand 2018 (for they launch properly next year) arrive on stage and they’re a hairier proposition. If the first phase lasted a decade then we are in a new phase, bifurcated by a collaboration with Sparks, who - lest we forget - enjoyed a fruitful period across la Manche when they teamed up with seminal dance legend Giorgio Moroder for their highly regarded second phase. The new record is more oriented towards electronic dance music, although getting people to dance was always part of their agenda. The album was recorded at their HQ in the south west of Scotland and finished off in the City of Light, with Cassius’s Philippe Zdar - of Phoenix, Pharrell, Cat Power and Beastie Boys production fame - at the helm. “And that is why we chose the venue for this evening,” says Kapranos without missing a beat (when I catch up with him at the venue pre-show.) “And it has nothing at all to do with the fact we were filming a new video here last night”.Ĭoincidence or not, there are many good reasons why Franz Ferdinand would choose Paris to start their new campaign. In case you’re wondering, the alliteratively monikered public figure who the avenue is named after was shot dead by a nationalist fanatic in 1914 as the First World War got under way. There may be spooky and unconscious forces at work in the choice of the venue though, a mere stone’s throw away from the Avenue Jean Jaurès which connects the 10th arrondissement to the 19th. The intimate and likeable riverside arts centre in the 10th arrondissement, with a space for around 300 Spotify winners tonight, caught singer Alex Kapranos’ eye when he took a break from mixing new album Always Ascending in Montmartre to attend a Moonlandingz show in April. This is a seasoned band after all, who headlined the 30,000 capacity Rock en Seine festival twelve kilometres across the city less than two months ago. The Point Éphémère will only ever be a temporary bolthole for a group like Franz Ferdinand, as its name implies.
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