Franz Ferdinand back for a third time

Franz Ferdinand love New Zealand, but they're not so keen on our sharks.

The Scottish rockers, who released their third album Tonight: Franz Ferdinand this week, were in New Zealand earlier this year to travel, camp, and relax after performing at Gisborne's Rhythm and Vines music festival.

But they kept their toes out of the water.

Speaking to Stuff.co.nz, guitarist Nick McCarthy and bassist Bob Hardy said they had not been keen on doing any surfing while they were here after an incident around the time of their last New Zealand show at the 2006 Big Day Out.

"I like surfing, but I can't do it," said McCarthy.

"I did a surf course last time I was around here, but it didn't really work. I bopped the surfboard on my nose. I got a blood nose and got out before the sharks came."

The critics have been wanting to give Franz Ferdinand a bit of a bite lately too.

The Glasgow quartet - along with singer Alex Kapranos and drummer Paul Thomson - formed in 2002, and 2004's self-titled debut saw them widely hailed as one of the year's best bands.

That was thanks largely to three brilliantly catchy singles: Take Me Out, This Fire and The Dark of the Matinee.

With their pop hooks, angular guitar riffs and arty videos, they stood out from the garage rock that was swamping the charts at the time.

But the acclaim mellowed with 2005's quickfire follow-up You Could Have It So Much Better, which attempted to pull off the same tricks as its predecessor - without adding anything new.

And with little action from the band over the past two years, you can almost hear the fickle British critics circling like sharks, wanting to dismiss the band as one-trick ponies.

If Franz Ferdinand felt any pressure, they weren't showing it.

"We felt less pressure (on the third album)," Hardy said.

"We had the whole second album cliché thing, and then when we started this record and talked to journalists about it everyone was like, 'So, difficult third album eh?'

"As far as we're concerned, it's the 'relaxed' album. "

McCarthy: "We recorded it back in Glasgow and there was no one there to put any pressure on us. We were at home, just writing, and that was it."

Tonight: Franz Ferdinand sees the band rediscovering their love of catchy hooks and choruses - especially on the sing-along first single Ulysses.

While it proves rumours of a Kylie Minogue-style pop reinvention weren't true, there are plenty of dancefloor fillers.

That's evident on ‘80's influenced dance-pop tracks like Turn It On and No You Girls, which erupts in a frenzy of riffs, hand claps and joyous shout-along choruses.

Then there's the album's eight-minute centrepiece Lucid Dreams, which takes a Beatles-esque melody and turns it into a synth-fest foot stomper that the Chemical Brothers would be proud of.

The band describes their new album as "dirty pop" - and they're not wrong.

"It's a bit slower, kind of dirtier, with more synthesisers, groovier, and very rhythm heavy. It's very much geared for the dance floor," said Hardy

McCarthy: "I think it's not as pop as some people might expect it to be. We always set out to write pop tunes because that's what we like doing."

They admit the album took too long to make, and blame the delay on fiddling around in the studio.

"Sometimes we'd record a song and couldn't recreate (the sound of the demo). We just couldn't get it back. That was a bit daft - we could have done that a bit faster, a bit easier."

Hardy said this was "part of the process" and resulted in a better album.

"It was fun. It had its moments. It just took time, I think. I wouldn't change it for the world."

The band admitted they weren't expecting to sell as many albums in the face of illegal downloads, and a free download of Lucid Dreams that appeared on their website before Christmas seemed to confirm this.

"I think it's an exciting time to release an album," said McCarthy. "I'm interested to see what happens to it. You just don't sell albums these days - no one does."

Hardy said the band's biggest reward came from playing live.

"We didn't get a band together to sell records anyway. We made an album (and) we're really happy with it. We just want to go and play it live now.

"It's always the live crowd we get off to, you know?

They say a return to New Zealand in 2009 is a possibility - but they'll be doing all they can to avoid those pesky sharks.

* Tonight: Franz Ferdinand is out now.

 

- © Fairfax NZ News