Alex Kapranos: Wish I was Sid

Ah, the follies of youth - apparently Alex Kapranos was so desperate to emulate Sid Vicious, he was hoping he was going to die an early death:

"I wanted to be like Buddy Holly or Sid Vicious or Rupert Brooke and have achieved everything I was going to do and done it all by the time I was 21 and then die glamorously. Unfortunately, it didn't happen like that."

... so, instead, I did the next best thing and stabbed someone to death and spent time lying about in a pool of my own shit and misery.

Franz Ferdinand chained to the mixing desk

The new Franz Ferdinand album won't be in the shops in time for Christmas. (Or, for those of you born after 1990, the new FF album won't be uploaded into secure retail space before Christmas).

Alex Kapranos is still putting it together. And they need to come up with a new name:

“We were gonna call it 'Bite Hard' at one point because there was a song called 'Bite Hard' and we weren’t gonna use that as a song, but liked the phrase,” he said.

“It’s quite suggestive but apparently in the States if you say something ‘bites’ it means it sucks, so if something bites hard, it sucks really badly. So we thought; ‘No we’ll choose another title.’”

We're surprised that Alex didn't know that - do British people really go to the US unaware of local idiom that's been filtered through a thousand films and songs? Would Alex have a driving holiday in Idaho scuppered because he couldn't find a petrol station - "they only seem to be selling gas, and this is a diesel car..."?

Franz Aloud

Franz Ferdinand are about to be in the studio, with Girls Aloud producer Brian Higgins doing what, apparently, we're obliged to describe as "twiddling the knobs". As if the reason wasn't obviously "because we'd like to see what happens and pop is bloody lovely", NME asks Alex Kapranos what they think they're playing at:

“We could easily make a ‘Franz Ferdinand by numbers’ record, but there’s no point, no enjoyment in making a record like that. If we wanted to make a record like that we would have released it last year, that’s why we’ve been taking our time to push ourselves.”

And, of course, that pop is bloody lovely.

Kapranos calls the car vigilantes

Alex Kapranos appears to have been ripped off by the Beastie Boys:

[H]is prized vintage Mercedes has been robbed of its precious badge.

Alex had parked the G-registration Merc outside his Glasgow flat while he was busy working on new material with the rest of the band.

He was dismayed when he returned to find it stripped of its badge.

Alex said: "If anyone knows who snapped the badge off the front bonnet when it was parked outside my flat, can you give his balls a wee boot from me? Much obliged."

He's then at pains to stress that the car only cost him £250 - so "vintage" in the "old and knackered" sense rather than something Lord Montagu might be interested in.

And the moral is, don't smoke or something

Alex Kapranos is taking on the role of Surgeon General, delighted by the ban on smoking:

"The smoking ban has got to be a good thing. What's good about cancer? My grandad died of cancer through smoking.

"I came across the ban first in New York and it seemed freaky, but you don't notice it after a while."

The smoking ban we can take. The clumsy shoehorning of it into every soap opera set south of Carlisle we could do without. Don't stick a poster about smoking up in your going-out-of-business chip shop, you fool; you need that space to fight a grease-splattered battle against the kebab bar.

Kapranos versus the scalpers

Alex Kapranos has joined the growing call for something to be done about people reselling gig tickets at higher-than-face-value prices:

Fuming Franz Ferdinand frontman Alex Kapranos branded touts “capitalist bastards” and urged fans to “smack” them.

The Take Me Out rocker blasted: “These people are essentially a group of organised criminals. They’re destroying what should be a really pleasurable and affordable experience for ordinary people.”

Organised criminals, except for, erm, not breaking any laws. And while it's true that professional touts are capitalist bastards, until Kapranos starts flogging his own tickets and stops selling them through the booking-fee gouging "agencies", he might want to rail a little less at people exploiting others for profit.

Franz get back to work

Older readers might recall Franz Ferdinand, from before the the Arctic Monkeys. They're getting back to work:

"Nick and I are writing some more tunes. We’ve got a wee place in Glasgow where we’re doing some new songs.

“It’s a wee bit different from last stuff but still very danceable, that’s the main thing. It’s always pop. Franz Ferdinand has always been pop."

That's that Alex Kapranos, that is. The band are going to be locked in the studio for the summer, so won't be doing anything live during the summer.

You could have it so much better with Franz Ferdinand

Franz Ferdinand - my, how tired and old they seem compared with Arctic Monkeys and Lily Allen - are putting together their third album. By law, of course, this must be "difficult" and Alex Kapranos suggests it's going to show off a new style for the band:

: "I don't really want to rely on the old songs so much - the songs that we were writing when we were on tour. I'd rather see what the character of the new songs is that we're going be writing. I'd like the next album to be quite new, to be quite different sounding from everything we've ever done before."

We love that "everything", where "everything" is two albums. We're not sure, though, there's necessarily anything inherently good about sounding different. Lily Allen sounds different from the first two Franz Ferdinand albums, but that isn't a recommendation.

Something to listen to

Joanna Newsom guest djs on NPR's All Songs Considered

Alex Kapranos reads from the book of his Guardian food columns (continues every day this week)

Alvin Hall explores Jay-Z's rise in "From Brooklyn to the Boardroom"

[Please note the URLs will expire]

music jay z alex kapranos joanna newsom

THE VIEW FROM BBC THREE

We see in Friday's Guardian that Alex Kapranos has elected to stand down from his role as food-critic-at-large. Perhaps the demands on his time were too much of a strain; it was interesting that for a band who were up at Edinburgh this week sharing the secrets of songwriting they weren't showing much evidence of time spent constructing new material. We know that the tendency at these affairs is to fall back on greatest hits packages, but you'd have hoped for more from Franz Ferdinand. Instead, it was left to some (admittedly nifty) back projections to give the sense of novelty.

Last festival season, one of the most memorable songs was the Rakes' 22 Grand Job, a tune which provided the focus for guest appearances galore. This year, the Rakes turned up again, and the highlight of their set was, yes, 22 Grand Job, with Dizee Rascal joining them in the Leeds tent. Doesn't exactly suggest they're much more than a one-song band, does it?

music reading 2006 leeds 2006 franz+ferdinand dizee rascal the rakes

HOW TO HAVE A NUMBER ONE HIT

Alright, then: Franz Ferdinand can't talk with authority about number one hits, but they do at least know how to do the charts. They gave a talk at the Edinburgh Festival on just that subject.

Their hints included Alex Kapranos revealing how he wrote his very first tune:

"It was about unrequited love, a girl that I fancied that wouldn't look at me. It's an eternal theme of writing," he said. But he refused to talk about his first song, saying it was too bad.

We're sure Art Brut would be happy to take it off your hands for cash, mind.

Then, it was some wide-ranging advice:

"It's just messing about, putting your hands in different places on the instrument to see what sounds good," Kapranos said. "Most of it is mucking about, coming out with as many ideas as you can and then just be ruthless about it."

Which, funnily enough, is a direct quote from the Heather Mills sex education book, if we're not mistaken.

The fans, though, were delighted:

"It great to see artists as real people, rather than up on stage," Mhairi Threlfal, 17, of Edinburgh, said.

We're not sure in what way having someone stand at the front of a room in a Literary Festival is different from them standing on the stage at a Pop Festival, but we can't deny that it is 37% more real.

music edinburgh festival franz ferdinand

PETE DOHERTY WITH DRUGS ON THE STREETS

It's only an Alex Kapranos short of defining a generation: Babyshambles and The Steets working together on a version of Prangin' Out. Mike Skinner explains:

"I was the same generation as The Libertines and the first tour we ever did was in Japan with them," he said. "It was a festival tour where I first met Carl (Barat) and Pete.

"I wanted to get Pete on 'When You Wasn't Famous' but that didn't happen. He's quite a difficult person to get hold of."

As the magistrates courts can testify.

music mike skinner the streets pete doherty babyshambles

KAPRANOS GOES NUTS

T in the Park almost ended in tragedy when Alex Kapranos had a brush with death: He nibbled at a tuna casserole and felt something tingle in his mouth.

It seems that Kapranos has a nut allergy, although he managed to save himself by spitting out the fish dish. Which makes it sound to us that he doesn't have the nut allergy that's quite so life-threatening that you need adrenaline injections to save yourself. Not that we'd wish that on him.

Plug: Franz Ferdinand have a new single out this week

music alex kapranos franz ferdinand

YOU COULD MAKE YOUR BUSINESS SO MUCH BETTER

There's sound business sense behind Franz Ferdinand registering their trademark in a bid to avoid bootleggers, but even so... it does feel a long way from art happenings in warehouses.

Apparently they've even included underwear in the trademark application. The Kapranos knickers cannot be far away.

music franz ferdinand alex kapranos

KAPRANOS: SMART OR A BIT KNOBBY?

We're not sure we can answer that. Alex Kapranos was ticked off by the manager of a Singapore hotel Franz Ferdinand were staying in, so as an act of revenge, the band took 150 fans back for an after-show party.

Because, yes, that'll show the manager - but it's not going to be the manager who has to cope with 150 people milling about, is it? It'll be the lower-paid staff who actually do the work. It's like kneecapping someone's mother when you fall out with them.

music alex kapranos franz ferdinand

WHAT THE POP PAPERS SAY: Smash Hits comes as the end

The news that Smash Hits was to be finally hit on the head with one final, fatal falling picnic table was met with a degree of sadness amongst those who grew up on, with, or by the magazine, but not, we imagine by those few left who choose between it, I Love Stars (nee I Love Pop) and Top of the Pops magazine these days. After all, the magazine had long-since ceased to make its readers feel like they were part of a club, and they themselves probably didn't realise it was once sich a significant part of the magazine make-up of the UK.

The reasons for its decline? Part of the story was contained in the reports of the closure - "the Smash Hits brand will live on" in various digital TV and radio and mobile phone formats - when EMAP is in need of the goodwill of artists to leverage cash off their likenesses in the new, always-on world, it couldn't really afford to have that brand built around a magazine which was taking the piss out of them. As such, what few teeth the title had have long since been drawn - for some time now, SH has been careful to only laugh with, not at, the popstars - the club boundary was redrawn, and the readers were no longer in league with the magazine.

Demographics have also played their part - as teenagers try to mature more quickly, they've started to drop Smash Hits from their hands at an ever earlier age. Faced with the loss of the top end of the demographics, the team have pursued younger readers with more vigour; that, of course, has accelerated the drop-off of older readers as they come to view the magazine as more and more childish. The crazy cycle has continued to a point where, apparently, the average SH reader was just eight - if they'd carried on churning like this for another 18 months, the likely outcome would have been a repositioning alongside the CBeebies comic. Many magazines suffer from seeing their readers picked off by the grim reaper; Smash Hits was starting to be caught in a panic that a large part of their target market hadn't been born yet.

So, this is where it ends up - a sad flash proclaiming "New Look!", a nasty little personal organiser competing with Pony's "free bendy zebra pen". Oddly, the strange journey of indiepop has thrown up a farewell cover mainly taken up by Preston from the Ordinary Boys and with some space for a photo of Alex from the Arctic Monkeys talking to Alex Kapranos.

The modern version of Bitz - called News, Gossip, Whatever - has some hilarious blind items which, erm, print the answers upside down; and some not-so-hilarious photos of, for example, Lee Otway from Hollyoaks showing his bottom and Liam Gallagher gurning. It's also where the cover story (all 200-ish words of it) sits. Prepare to go inside "the mental mind of Preston": "I'd love to have a cameo in Eastenders."
Blimey, he is mental, isn't he?

Some band called Love Bites are called upon to rate boys - they give Pete Burns zero out of five because "make-up on blokes is a real no-no." Have these girls not seen Velvet Goldmine? (Okay... that question might answer itself.)

With the closure of Smash Hits, the world of journalism will be facing up to the loss of The Official McFly column, written by a different one of McFly each fortnight. Or, more likely, written by the same press guy pretending to be a different one of McFly. Significantly, Tom reveals that he's moving out of the house he's been sharing (in a Monkees, not Brokeback way) with the other members of the band. "I notice that Danny has developed a bizarre obession with his nipples" he offers, although it's not clear if this is by way of explanation.

Shayne Ward is in even worse straits - he only got to do one official column before the magazine was pulled. We wonder if he'll take that as some sort of warning about the fickle hand of dame showbiz.

The rump of the mighty Black Type is now called Inbox and if it's a little brutish, at least it's short. Kirsty Hammond from Newport emails to say that she's liking the new series of the OC but "that new girl Taylor better stop being nasty to Summer 'cos nobody likes a bully." Blame it on email - twenty years ago nobody would have wasted the price of a stamp on this sort of thing. Having said which, there seems to be no shortage of people splashing 25p on pointless texts: "Ash simpson nu toon rox!!"

And, a few pages on, here is Ashlee Simpson herself, revealing that - gasp - she's in a relationship. "Braxton Olita plays guitar in my band" she trills. Oh, great, so the time you funked off the stage leaving your band to cover for you in front of millions, it wasn't just your colleagues you let down, it was your boyfriend as well.

The regular feature of modern celeb magazines, the 'what's your most embarrassing moment' column turns up Dave from Son of Dork talking about the time he got drunk, went up to his mum, told her he loved her and took off all his clothes. Which seems less like a thing you'd tell a magazine read by eight year-olds, more like a fertile subject to be covered in a full issue of the British Psychiatry Review.

Pink, meanwhile, pops up to tell you how to follow your dreams: "never let people tell you you can't do something." Pink - who has had several hits, writes songs, and generally has something interesting to say - only gets a tiny corner, though, as room has to be made for a full page of the thoughts of Paris Hilton. And, obviously, filling. "God blessed me with everything I have" - well, actually, petal, your rich family gave you most of it. "Whatever I do - clothes, make-up, hotels, clubs - people love it and it's great."

The interesting moment, and it's surprising to report there is one, comes when they ask her what her ideal man is like - "I can't say, because I have a boyfriend, Stavros." Presumably Stavros had someone explain to him the implication that, well, whatever her ideal is, he isn't, as since the interview was published, they've split.

The saddest moment? After the issue just stutters to a halt with a bunch of songwords and some pictures of Britney Spears looking awful, there's a promise of what should have come in the next issue. Bands? Big interviews? The return of Barry? Nope, the only reason people are given to come back in a fortnight is the promise of free Pineapple pencilcase. Oh, and a free pencil to put in it. When even the free gifts are as appealing as another column by Shayne Ward, maybe the time is right to pull the plug.

Is the end of Smash Hits a sign of a deeper problem in music? There are other signs that something - at least in the corporate end of the world - has gone very wrong indeed. The Guardian's City Diary reported on the Brits - and not because it felt out of place there: "We're not sure what musical link the likes of Lloyds TSB, HBOS, Scottish Widows, Skandia, Goldman Sachs or UBS can claim to justify hosting a table or two at the bash. At least Mastercard ca explain bagging a whopping 26 tables as one of the perks of being the main sponsor." And they wonder why the atmosphere feels like it's a bankers conference these days. It's because the audience is like a banker's conference.

Observer Music Monthly week comes round again, bringing Jim McCabe's take with it. He's especially delighted by Paul Morley's unwanted piece on ten years of the Spice Girls. Jim says "Looks like his bouts of supplication at the feet of St Bono & 15 minutes of chav acclaim via Celebrity Big Brother have accelerated Paul Morley's journey towards mid-life crisis. It's a sorry spectacle when someone from the punk years morphs into the next Benny Hill, but there you go. BTW, someone should have a quiet word in his ear if he really thinks that the Arctic Monkeys are the new Spice Girls." Yes, the once spot-on Morley does indeed suggest that the rise of the Arctic Monkeys and the manufacture of the Spice Girls are of a piece.

The OMM also chats with John Lydon, and having made himself look a twit attacking Green Day for, uh, not being what he means by punk, this time he manages to side with one of the biggest bigot's friends in recent British political history: "I'm not awkward for the sake of it. I stick to what I believe in, which is do the best you can, mean what you say, and think about it. People don't mind profiting off me and, let's face it, I'm far from talentless.'

And then he adds the name of another politician who was condemned for his beliefs: Enoch Powell.

Sorry?

'Don't get me wrong. I'm from a multicultural family, I lived through Thatcher, but Powell stood up for what he believed in.'"

(Lived through Thatcher? When, exactly, did you relocate to the US, Lydon? And isn't your main line of work, buying and selling propety, the ultimate career choice of the Thatcherite anyway?)

Is it really such a great thing that Powell "stood up for what he believed in" when what he believed in was that "the black would have the whip hand over the white man", when what he believed in even Ted Heath saw as "racialist in tone", when what he believed was described by the chair of the West Midlands Race Relations board as "an act of brutality" against one million British citizens? And in what way is your family background meant to give you a pass on supporting the poster boy for the NF and the BNP, John? After all, Powell quit the Tories in a strop over Europe (when he wasn't proposing stopping immigration, he was the Kilroy-Silk of his age) and joined the Ulster Unionists.

Perhaps the greatest irony, of course, is that Powell's most vitriolic speech, the Rivers of Blood tirade, was made in a bid to derail the 1968 Race Relations Act, one of the key provisions of which was to make illegal the sort of signs - "No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs" - which Lydon uses to give a title to his autobiography. The reason why Powell was vilified, you twit, was not because what he said what he thought, but because what he thought was spiteful.

"The NME shows are a homecoming for us" pledges Richard Archer in this week's issue of still-the-world's-biggest-selling-rock-weekly, which is just as well as they didn't pick up a Brit (although with the level of support they're getting from the Sun these days, they might be in with a shout next time round.)

While Preston got a full interview last week, Maggot has to make do with a Peter Robinson versus. Not that we think that's a step down, actually. He still maintains he was in CBB to make up the numbers, although he allowed that "January is always a quiet month" so he wouldn't have been doing much otherwise.

Radar peers in an odd way at The Young Knives; they don't like "the IKEA generation", although we've never quite understood what the problem with Ikea is, actually. Yes, it would be nice if we were all William Morris and had time to whittle and carve oak chests when we need a new place to store CDs, but who has the time? Who has the skills? Nobody would, given unlimited options, use Ikea; but nor would anyone use Tesco. Ikea frees times that would otherwise be wasted worrying about furniture to be used having sex, drawing diagrams, or plotting political troubles.

Back to Eastenders for the Belle & Sebastian piece - the NME has decided that its readers won't know who they are and so has gathered together a bunch of facts about the band, including the time they got arrested for trespassing on the Enders set (back when TOTP was shot next door up in Elstree).

reviews
live
reverend and the makers - leicester princess charlotte - "before long you'll be one of the congregation"
be your own pet - london bush hall - "like a cat clawing your ankles to buggery"
the darkness - alexandra palace - "the gig crumbles to an end and the band walk off"

albums
stellastarr* - harmonies for the haunted - "only four points for quality", 4
beth orton - comfort of strangers - "gracefully aging doesn't make for great records", 6
some girls - heaven's pregnant teens - "each a more glorious violation of the senses than the last", 7

tracks
totw - delays - valentine - "the best thing they've ever done"
the pistolas - listen listen - "sticky fingered genius"

and finally, here's the Guardian Weekend magazine with... oh, another interview with Preston. I'm not sure I can work up the interest...

music music smash hits preston paris hilton arctic monkeys john lydon enoch powell brits mastercard nme the darkness

NME AWARD NOMINATIONS

They're the awards that aren't like the other awards, very much. They're the NME awards, and the short list is out now. Surprisingly, for the awards which are supposed to be cooler than the Brits, Oasis are well represented during the list. And the Arctic Monkeys are on the Best British Band list as well as the Newcomer award, although surely by the time nominations closed for these awards they'd barely plugged in their keyboard?

Here are the nominations in full:

Best British Band - supported by ShockWaves
Arctic Monkeys
Bloc Party
Kaiser Chiefs
Franz Ferdinand
Oasis

Best International Band - supported by T4
Arcade Fire
Green Day
The Killers
The Strokes
Foo Fighters

Best Solo Artist - supported by E4 Music
Antony And The Johnsons
Richard Ashcroft
Ian Brown
Graham Coxon
Kanye West

Best New Band - supported by Radio 1
Arctic Monkeys
Editors
Magic Numbers
Maximo Park
We Are Scientists

Best Live Band - supported by Carling
Arctic Monkeys
Franz Ferdinand
Green Day
Kaiser Cheifs
Oasis

Best Album - supported by HMV
Babyshambles - 'Down In Albion'
Bloc Party - 'Silent Alarm'
Franz Ferdinand - 'You Could Have It So Much Better'
Kaiser Chiefs - 'Employment'
Oasis - 'Don't Believe The Truth'

Best Track
'I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor' - Arctic Monkeys
'Fuck Forever' - Babyshambles
'Do You Want To' - Franz Ferdinand
'I Predict A Riot' - Kaiser Chiefs
'The Importance Of Being Idle' - Oasis

Best Video - supported by MTV2
'Do You Want To' - Franz Ferdinand
'Dare' - Gorillaz
'I Predict A Riot' - Kaiser Chiefs
'The Importance Of Being Idle' - Oasis
'Juicebox' - The Strokes

Best Event - supported by lastminute.com
Carling Weekend: Reading And Leeds Festivals
Glastonbury
Live8
T In The Park
V Festival

Best TV Show
Gonzo
Little Britain
Lost
The Mighty Boosh
Peep Show

Best Radio Show
Colin And Edith
Steve Lamacq
Zane Lowe
Chris Moyles
Lauren Laverne

Best Film
Batman Begins
Charlie And The Chocolate Factory
Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire
King Kong
Sin City

Best Music DVD
Dig!
Green Day: Bullet In A Bible
Kaiser Chiefs: Enjoyment
Live8
Morrissey: Who Put The M In Manchester

Best Website
nme.com
kaiserchiefs.co.uk
myspace.com
oasisinet.com
wearescientists.com

Best Venue
London Brixton Carling Academy
Glasgow Barrowlands
London Astoria
London Koko
Manchester Apollo

Hero Of The Year
Carl Barat
Pete Doherty
Liam Gallagher
Bob Geldof
Alex Turner

Villain Of The Year
Tony Blair
James Blunt
George Bush
Pete Doherty
Justin Hawkins

Best Dressed - supported by Topman
Pete Doherty
Brandon Flowers
Liam Gallagher
Alex Kapranos
Ricky Wilson

Worst Dressed
Pete Doherty
Justin Hawkins
Chris Martin
Jack White
Robbie Williams

Worst Album
'Down In Albion' - Babyshambles
'Back To Bedlam' - James Blunt
'The Bravery' - The Bravery
'One Way Ticket To Hell... And Back' - The Darkness
'Wonderland' - McFly

Worst Band
Babyshambles
Coldplay
The Darkness
McFly
Son Of Dork

Perhaps the most wounded band will be The Bravery, who might feel being lumped in with James Blunt and The Darkness for worst album is a little unfair; and while we might roll our eyes at Geldof appearing on the hero of the year list at least we can work out why - what the hell is Liam Gallagher doing on there claiming heroism in 2005? What did he do that was so heroic?

And which NME readers really feel that Live8's DVD was worthy of an accolade? Was it the Velvet Revolver bit that made it so worthwhile, or the U2 section? Surely two minutes of Pete Doherty acting like Emily Bishop on two pina coladas doesn't a classic video make?

Anyway, you're invited to vote online if you want a say. Use your votes either wisely, or in a totally inappropriate fashion.

music nme awards

ACTUALLY, THE DIGINIFIED SILENCE WAS MORE APPEALING

Having not risen to any of the I Speak Your Weight machine insults churned out by Liam Gallagher, food writer and sometime pop star Alex Kapranos has finally had enough:

“He knows he can get in the papers from being as obnoxious as he can.

“When I read the Press that surrounded them earlier in 2005, it sounded like an extremely anxious, neurotic young girl at a high school who thought that she had younger, better-looking competition and was just bitching about everything about her. I think everybody, the Kaiser Chiefs, Bloc Party, every contemporary band was at the end of some form of vitriol from him. I’m not particularly bothered by him. it just seems like bitchery from cheap neuroses.”

We're bemused, though: surely high school girls are about the only people in the world who aren't bothered by younger competition? Isn't being in the Upper Sixth, in itself, an empowering addition to the position held in the pecking order? Alex presumably meant "a girl transferred in from a new school who's better developed and has her own bras." Or something.

We imagine Liam's riposte will be along the lines of "he's a cock, or something."

music liam gallagher alex kapranos oasis franz ferdinand

ALEX KAPRANOS LIKES TO TASTE THE SAVELOY

No, no, not in any filthy way. He just really likes saveloys from his home town of Sunderland. According to the local paper, anyway:

Generations of Wearsiders have been brought up on the savoury treat ? and despite being the singer of one of Britain's most successful bands, Alex still harks back to his favourite fare.

Alex's favourite is the famous saveloy dip with "everything on" ? strong mustard, pease pudding, sage and onion stuffing and then the smoked saveloy the end of the sandwich being dipped into the rich saveloy stock.

"It's immediate and reassuring, rich and revitalising. I like fast food this way."

music alex kapranos franz ferdinand

THE NEXT FRANZ IS PREPARED

Having had a bit of a songwriting splurge, Franz Ferdinand have piled up an album's worth of new material, and Alex Kapranos describes the new stuff as "grander" (i.e., they'll be wearing dinner jackets in the videos):

"They are a lot grander - less spiky. I've been listening to Kanye West and Amerie's 1 Thing. That's what some of the new stuff is sounding like."

music alex kapranos franz ferdinand