Superlatives
A Vulture series in which artists judge the best and worst of their own careers.
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And that is absolutely one of the most frustrating feelings in the world.
(As well as making us perk up about Russian constructivism with their accompanying visuals.)
The new one right now is Curious.
Thats the last thing we recorded and it feels like its where my ideas are at the moment.
I love the way it is.
It really makes me want to dance.
I hope it makes other people want to dance as well.
Its something that I wouldve found intimidating when the band started off.
I dont think I wouldve had the guts to try and sing like that.
Its kind of like, Oh, yeah.
Ive got the confidence to try some other things now.
Its a very untypically Franz Ferdinand song.
Its just voice, guitar, and piano.
It does what songs should do.
It resonates with me emotionally.
Most overrated song
Oh, gosh.
I would say its probably everything on the first EP.
It doesnt matter what the songs are.
I know Im that asshole about bands myself as well.
Strongest album opener
I think Jacqueline is the strongest opener because its a non sequitur.
Where youre listening to a song and go, What the fuck was that?
I wasnt expecting to go there.
Its like, Whoa!
What world are we in now?
Weve recorded it and played it live quite a few times.
Its a song about hedonism.
When you would come down from those hedonistic times, that come down wouldnt necessarily be on the Monday.
The real darkness of that would come down on the Tuesday afterward.
Those Black Tuesdays were some of the bleakest times.
Its Other Alex who has to deal with it.
Thats that other guy.
The Alex of this moment, this Other Alex, is going to really enjoy this moment.
So thats quite ahedonistic concept.
Probably not a very healthy one.
So Im going to say Take Me Out.
There are other ones.
Id say the album version of Lucid Dreams is quite experimental.
It sonically went into places that we hadnt gone before.
Most ofAlways Ascending, the album, was pretty experimental as well.
Lazy Boy uses really bizarre time signatures and some weird things.
I always like experimenting.
Its all a big experiment.
I kind of hate when bands announce their experimentation era.
I hate when theyre like, Oh, were going to do something thats difficult for us now.
To me, experimentingisfor us.
I dont need to prove anything.
The first line is I live in the Merchant City.
That song is like a Polaroid of our life in Glasgow.
The first reference in full is, I live in the Merchant City, I drive a four-by-four.
I eat M&S, it tastes of nothing.
It looks a bit like a hearse.
Thats what I used to drive the band around in.
I remember I bought it for 50.
The song is kind of about that.
It was really our life at that time.
I immediately remember us driving around with all the gear in the back and that old Merc in Glasgow.
Most earworm-y guitar work
I love earworms.
I really, really, really love them.
Because when we played, that was always the one people sang back to us amongst our friends.
I have lots of different ways of approaching earworms.
I essentially rely on my instincts and often have to turn off my conscious brain to discover them.
Most creatively fulfilling album
Its difficult.
I cant think of an album that wasnt creatively fulfilling to record and write.
Its going to be a toss up betweenAlways AscendingandTonight.
Its very difficult to choose between those two.
Okay, I would sayTonight.
I felt we could try anything anddidtry anything and thoroughly enjoyed it.
We went to all sorts of weird places to do it.
There was an old theater where wed record and use the reverb of the room.
We were swinging the microphone from the ceiling to create the doppler effect.
We recorded some of the songs in the basement, which had a strange pattering kind of sound.
We really pushed things with the structures of songs and the approach to recording.
It felt like a very obsessive record.
I always wanted to make a record like that, and thats really howTonightfelt.
We had no windows at all.
We had no idea what was going on in the outside world.
We were just completely caught up in the creation of this piece of music, and I loved that.
What a great thing to be able to do in your life.
They gave me reassurance that your artistic ambition need never diminish with age.
I always want to be looking for something new and I always want to never be satisfied.
I sang about that in a song on our first record, actually.
On Come On Home, I go, Im dissatisfied.
I loved to satisfy.
That was very reassuring.
Im going to be 50 in a months time, and that feels good.
It feels like, fuck, its just the beginning.
Biggest revelation revisitingFranz Ferdinandnearly 20 years later
I dont go back and listen to our music.
Of course, I do in the sense that I perform it.
Its not for me, its for the rest of the world now.
Whats the word always used in America?
Even a song as obvious as Take Me Out.
Or it could be talking about a romantic standoff.Its a dark lyric.
Theres ambiguity there, too.
Theres this space for people to overlay their interpretations of Take Me Out.
Is it a song about going out?
Somebody told me that the Yankees play it sometimes when a pitcher strikes a player out.
Its funny that its a sports song to some people.
I love a degree of ambiguity in a song.
I guess thats always been my favorite thing.
I love a lyric that feels sinister and upbeat simultaneously.
Look at a song like Happiness Is a Warm Gun.
The opening of that song, fuck, its so sinister and so dark.
Like, they were saying a penis is a warm gun, or a warm gun is a penis.
I dont know whether thats true or not.
[Laughs] I thought that was them laughing at the kind of men who are attracted to guns.
Maybe its all to do with the hedonism of that time.
I thought it could be a good decoration for the studio.
We were looking for percussion one day for No You Girls and wanted that clicky sort of sound.
But looking back on it, its a pretty fucked-up thing to do.
We should have just buried it.
Fuck knows where that skeleton came from.
We should have put it back in the ground or something.
Thats how I feel in retrospect.Sons and Daughtersinherited it when they used the studio space after us.
They asked if they could have it, so I said sure.
Best music video dance moves
Its definitely Curious.
For Curious, for the first time we did something that was actually a proper choreographed piece of movement.
Its like an old avant-garde art experimental dance.
Its something that I wanted to do for a long time.
The conversation were having now is an articulation of our art.
The visual aspects are an articulation of our art.
Its a communication of our ideas.
The production that we do in the studio is an articulation of our art.
The visual side has always been a fun part.
Im not going to pass that to somebody else to come up with an idea for us.
Im going to savor every one of those moments.
Second-choice historical figure you wouldve named the band after
Nobody has ever asked me that before.
I wanted a name that was phonetically good, and Franz Ferdinand alliterates it as two words.
You want to be one of those moments where nothings quite the same afterward.
I love those moments.
Theres not one thats coming to me obviously.
Franz Ferdinand, I have no respect for him as a character.
Maybe thats the key it has to be a figure who I have no respect for.
Im going to have to give this some serious thought.
The anti-matter to Franz Ferdinand.
When we have played secret shows in the past, we have used that as our alias.
Its a good name, but not quite as good as Franz Ferdinand.
Actually, Secret Society is not a bad name either.
Maybe for our next incognito show?
