After five LPs and more than twenty years as a band, Scottish rockers Franz Ferdinand have begun a huge retrospective tour alongside the release of Hits to the Head, the aptly-named greatest-hits compilation that chronicles an eighteen-song host of the band’s most timeless hits, as well as a pair of new tracks never-before-released to the world. The prospect of the ‘greatest-hits record’ is something that can seem dubious in the digital age, especially when artists or their teams collate the “essential” tracks from many bands in playlists for Spotify, Apple Music, and the like; something FF themselves have on their own page. But a playlist is not exactly the impetus for a tour of the world, and to marry the album and live dates, the band have been keeping their setlists strictly tied to reshufflings of the album’s tracklist, making for an absolute monster of a live gig.
Franz Ferdinand, helmed by singer and guitarist Alex Kapranos, were one of the bands that defined a very specific type of guitar sound across their first few albums. Part of a movement that was initially termed the “post-punk revival” – confusing considering the term has come to mean something more strange and less beholden to melody these days – FF stood alongside fellow UK outfits like Arctic Monkeys and American pioneers like LCD Soundsystem (with whom FF traded covers once upon a time), pushing this sound forward on both sides of the Atlantic.
But more refined than the scrappier AM, and more guitar-minded than the synth- and drum machine-led LCD, Franz Ferdinand had a niche within their own growing niche from the off; a certain type of hard-driving song built on interlocking guitar riffs as firm and unrelenting as Kapranos’ vocal, mixed with a bass that could amplify that sound or draw in funk influence at a moment’s notice. Like their contemporaries, danceability was a prime focus for the band, and from their home base of Glasgow, they succeeded time and again in the delicate balancing act of creating their distinct sound without ever slipping into monotony.
Kapranos’ vocal is the centerpiece of most Franz Ferdinand songs – he has the kind of elegant delivery and steely baritone that is best suited to providing this kind of vocal point, genuinely gorgeous but also conveying the practiced confidence of the shouted conversations that take place in the corners of clubs that were so ubiquitous in the nightlife scene of the 00s. There’s a bit of charm, a little bit of facetiousness, and quite a bit that walks the line between the two, providing a Glaswegian view of club politics in the way LCD Soundsystem highlighted the New York scene, songs like ‘No You Girls’ doing this best of all. On stage, few artists radiate the kind of energy that Kapranos does, and he gives the undeniable impression that he was specifically born to be playing to crowds of thousands, to a degree perhaps not yet exceeded in rock music.
He’s constantly airborne, posing at the front or back of the stage, switching from playing guitar to haunting the edges of the room with a wireless mic and his axe slung over his shoulder, or reaching out into the crowd to shake a hand for just one precious half-second like he’s God in Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam. That said the entirety of the band – save for drummer and newest member Audrey Tait – are quite mobile and taking advantage of the sizeable stage at the House of Blues, multi-instrumentalist Julian Corrie particularly animated whenever he has a chance to pull away from his Moog and take up the guitar for a song.
As the night progresses, the band rips through a setlist that by definition goes from strength to strength, charting a course through iconic tracks like ‘Walk Away’, ‘Ulysses’, ‘The Dark of the Matinee’, and of course ‘Take Me Out’. That last one has remained the band’s most ubiquitous cultural contribution, and for a time it was everywhere, from the radio to TV to scrappy little montages of video game footage kids would compile from their Xboxes – and even today just the first few notes trigger instant recognition in nearly anyone, and its vibe is as powerful as ever to command a room. They also circle back to their most recent release, 2018’s Always Ascending, to play the title track of that record, which prominently features a Shepard tone, an auditory illusion that uses three parallel, looping tones to create the illusion of a constantly rising note. After summoning every member of the band to the drum kit for the coda of ‘Outsiders’, the band retires backstage to plan their next move.
For the encore, Kapranos and the band partake in the grand tradition of elevating these nightcaps from merely being a few more songs into something truly unmissable. They begin with ‘Billy Goodbye’, one of the two new songs from Hits to the Head, the band’s first new material in years. Then the wholly unprecedented occurs: Kapranos approaches the front of the stage and bends down, asking for something he says someone had shown him earlier – a girl in the crowd hands him her phone for a moment, and he walks it around to each member of the band who nod in acknowledgment.
He turns it to the audience and, in large block letters, it reads, “MY NAME IS JACQUELINE”. She shares her name with the opening track from the band’s self-titled debut, probably the first song many Franz Ferdinand fans ever heard back in 2004. He smiles, returns her phone, and the band deviates – possibly for the first time on this tour – from their plan to only play from Hits to the Head, where ‘Jacqueline’ does not appear. The whole crowd cheers at the moment of sheer spontaneity, the kind of thing that absolutely makes one person’s night, but also treats the whole house to a rare cut they may not bring out again live for some time.
During the grand finale, the room turns blood red for ‘This Fire’, which grows from its three-and-a-half minute runtime on the album into a nearly ten-minute affair including some Kapranos-directed cheering, band member introductions, and everyone on the dance floor crouching down low at his instruction before the song explodes into its final rush. It seems that the chorus could go on forever and no one would tire, but sadly the finite nature of time demands the band bring things to a close after a lengthy evening. All five members walk to the front, join hands, and take a theatrical and well-deserved bow, thus concluding an evening that has shown, in no uncertain terms, why Franz Ferdinand’s music has remained so enjoyable, infectious, and enduring.
Review and Photos by Collin Heroux
