Loading ...Franz Ferdinand, Brixton Academy, 28th October
I watch as eight of the finest legs in rock take to the stage; seeing Franz Ferdinand playing as the clocks go back in this magnificently Victorian venue gives the whole thing a seedy timelessness, enhanced by their brittle brand of debauched pop.
The music comes almost nonstop for two hours. Aside from comparing the audience to a brothel that had not been redecorated in fifty years, they kept the chat to a minimum – much to my delight. Unless they keep performing as they speak, I believe bands should shut up on stage. There’s nothing so disappointing as the moment the music stops and the talking starts, and the rock god turns out to be as dull and stage-awkward as any mortal. Nothing was done about my other pet peeve though – why should the drum and bass be turned up so loud for live music that any guitar intricacies are lost, and playing the keyboard becomes entirely pointless?
One thing that has always kept me from appreciating The Franz is a lack of variety. Individually all their songs are perfect pop treats, but over the course of an album sound annoyingly similar. And over the course of a concert, that chunky bass is so insistent that I find myself becoming quickly fatigued. One of the problems is a set list targeted at all their dancier tracks – no ‘Eleanor Put Your Boots On’, ‘No Fade Together’, no ‘Katherine Kiss Me’. Exciting, but the silences and slow moments are what give the noise their power. Perhaps I wasn’t drunk enough to appreciate it – at £4.40 for a vodka and coke the size of a Calpol dose, why would I be? This was most obvious as the concert dribbled into a lengthy, repetitive instrumental, and then into nothingness.
‘Michael’ and ‘Take Me Out’ are obvious highpoints, but recent lead single ‘Ulysses’ is unable to match the heady atmosphere of the album on that loud stage. Part one ends with an invigorating drum-jam, with the entire band running about and bashing away on a set at the front of the stage.
Alex Kapranos described the new album as: “music of the night: to fling yourself around your room to as you psyche yourself for a night of hedonism, for the dance-floor, flirtation, for your desolate heart-stop, for losing it and loving losing it, for the chemical surge in your bloodstream. It’s for that lonely hour gently rocking yourself waiting for dawn and it all to be even again.”
I include it partly because it’s a fine quote, and partly because it sums this evening up so well. I figure maybe some dancing shoes and a hipflask would have made the night better, but Franz Ferdinand show enough flair to justify the trip down to Brixton…just.
