Typically when an artist goes on tour, you’ll spend the first half an hour listening to newly released material that’s still very much growing on people, before getting into the good stuff. The hits. Noel Gallagher has joked about it before at High Flying Birds gigs, knowing the audience is really waiting for the Oasis tracks, saying: “Don’t worry, only a few more to get through, then it’s hit after hit.”
Lucky for Franz Ferdinand fans - Franz Ferdifans? - their latest album is a ‘best of’ compilation which documents their best loved and most popular tracks of the last two decades.
Hits to the Head came out in March this year, followed by the announcement of three special live shows for the Scottish rock band - the first of which would be held at Manchester’s Victoria Warehouse.
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In a statement, Alex Kapranos said: “I’ve always wanted to make a best of. They were such a big part of my life growing up. My parents didn’t have a huge record collection. They didn’t have every Bowie LP, they had Changes. The Red and Blue Beatles. Rolled Gold. For them, it was what they wanted to listen to. The best bits. The Hits.
“That’s the point of this record: the hits to the head, hits to the heart, hits to the feet as they hit the dancefloor.”
And so, on Wednesday night, I headed down to the Victoria Warehouse to hit the dancefloor myself.
Supporting, The Great Leslie and Los Bitchos got the crowd of around 3,000 people warmed up and ready for the Take Me Out performers. The median age was noticeably a little higher that some of the other gigs I’ve been to recently, without a single BeReal or Snapchat camera in sight.
Los Bitchos set was particularly fun. The outfit describe themselves as ‘four gals from the underground realms of London, tripping out on Tequila and Cumbia vibes.’ They play mostly instrumental music with inspiration of the 70s and 80s, and proved that October isn’t too early to play a Christmas song to a Manchester audience.
Franz Ferdinand made their way onto the stage playing the opening notes of The Dark of the Matinee behind a curtain screen and flashing lights which offered some stunning visual affects. And from the moment that curtain dropped, Kapranos and the band did exactly what they set out to do - deliver hit after hit.
Twenty years is a long time for a band to rack up a number of singles, albums, awards and what not. In fact, over the last two decades, Franz Ferdinand have sold over 10 million albums, received 1.2 billion streams to date, 14 platinum albums, won a Brit, Ivor Novello + Mercury Prize awards, Grammy nominations and sold six million tickets for their incendiary live show worldwide.
And a ‘best of’ tour doesn’t symbolise the end of Franz Ferdinand, either. It’s more a reflection for them too. Kapranos puts it like this: “For the artists, it was a retrospective. A way to understand the progression of ideas with the perspective of the long term. An indication of where the future may be taking them.”
They continued with No You Girls and the newly released Curious - one of only two brand new tracks to be woven into Hits to the Head. Why put new tracks on a hits album, you ask? Well, Curious and Billy Goodbye feel so distinctly Franz Ferdinand that listeners already feel as though they know them on the first play. And I suppose after 20 years, the band will have a good idea of what will land well with their audience.
The room was bouncing for floor-filler Do You Want To, followed by Lucid Dreams and The Fallen. With almost 20 tracks to get through in an hour and a half, there wasn’t much time for chit-chat, but plenty of time for working the audience, clambering atop of amps and providing a total rock and roll experience. It was one of the most slick and polished live performances I’ve enjoyed this side of the pandemic, and there’s just something about live music that people appreciate a lot more since 2020 these days.
The band went straight from Michael into Take Me Out, their second single which catapulted them into fame, putting the band firmly on the global map on time for their eponymous debut album which went on to sell nearly four million copies worldwide.
Kapranos added: “The first time we played Take Me Out in a rehearsal room, I made a joke and said ‘Oh, I can almost imagine that being played on the radio’. I meant maybe once by Lamacq or Peel. None of us presumed anyone would really care. Then the album came out and we were sucked into a dizzying vortex of fame, tossed across the planet, not really knowing where we were. Top Of The Pops, Glastonbury, Taratata, Reading, Letterman, Roskilde, Fuji Rock, Mercury, Grammys, Brits, all those magazine covers… it was overwhelming.”
The year it was released - 2004 - Franz Ferdinand played 382 gigs, broke up for three days ‘after a punchup backstage’ and of course, got back together.
Towards the end of Outsiders there was a blackout, which gave new drummer Audrey Tait just enough time to move away from her drum kit and take up centre stage with some snares. As the lights illuminated the stage once more, all five members of the band held drumsticks in their hands and let the track go out with a funky percussion finish.
Audrey, who played for Hector Bizerk, joined the Glaswegian outfit in 2021 after Paul Thomson decided to part ways with the band.
The band say Audrey is ‘the same, but different’ - she certainly brings something fresh and fun to Franz Ferdinand, and is a fantastic percussionist, something Outsiders really allowed her to show off.
The band headed off-stage before Kapranos returned and asked the audience if they’d like to hear another song, and the applause that filled the room signalled a resounding ‘yes, please’.
Billy Goodbye - the second of the new tracks - was followed up with Darts of Pleasure, with Franz Ferdinand bowing out to The Fire. While Robbie Williams was across the city ‘entertaining you’, Franz Ferdinand were getting ready to ‘burn this city’ with their fiery and electric set packed with every possible hit you could hope for, and that was extremely nostalgic.
Here’s the full set list from Franz Ferdinand at the O2 Victoria Warehouse, October 19, 2022
The Dark of the Matinee
No You Girls
Curious
Walk Away
Evil Eye
Do You Want To
Stand on the Horizon
Always Ascending
Lucid Dreams
The Fallen
Love Illumination
Michael
Take Me Out
Ulysses (The Disco Bloodbath Effect)
Outsiders
Billy Goodbye
Darts of Pleasure
The Fire
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