Franz Ferdinand

Franz Ferdinand
Franz Ferdinand is the most famous recent Scottisch pop/rock band, named for the Austro-Hungarian Archduke whose murder sparked World War I. Formed by young and ambitious musicians, Franz Ferdinand features bassist Bob Hardy, guitarist Nick McCarthy, drummer Paul Thomson, and singer/guitarist Alex Kapranos.

Trailing post-punk influences from Talking Heads to Chic, the group's raucous, angular guitar pop is by turns visceral and thoughtful. Since their inception in 2002, Franz Ferdinand have sold more than 3million albums, making a bigger impact in America than Oasis and Robbie Williams.

Franz Ferdinand were formed when Kapranos met McCarthy at a warehouse party. McCarthy was a classically trained pianist and double bass player. Kapranos and Hardy began working on music together with McCarthy. The trio had been rehearsing at McCarthy's house for a while when they met Thomson and enlisted him as drummer.

Franz Ferdinand completed its line-up by enlisting Yorkshireman Robert Hardy as bassist. The band switched practice spaces, stumbling upon an abandoned warehouse that they named the Chateau.

Alex Kapranos cultivated Chateau into the centre for Glasgow's underground art scene featuring ramshackle gigs and assorted local artists notably. In addition to holding exhibitions, the group would host specifically themed parties, eventually turning it into an illicit, modern Prohibition era party.

The band members needed a new rehearsal space once their illicit art parties were discovered by the police. Locals referred the Ferdinands to as renaissance rock and roll dandies.

By summer 2002, when Franz Ferdinand recorded an EP's worth of material that they planned to release themselves, rumors spread about the band. FF signed to Domino in the summer of 2003 who issued the group's EP Darts of Pleasure, 'the Scottish Interpol'.

Franz Ferdinand did not rise to stardom before the release of their second single, Take Me Out. The single turned out to be a sizeable modern rock hit that propelled them to mainstream popularity in the U.K. 'Take Me Out' also earned them the Breakthrough Video award at that year's MTV Music Video Awards.

The band's momentum continued and they eventually released their self-title debut album Franz Ferdinand in 2004. The album gained critical acclaim. Franz Ferdinand's success followed them across the pond. Fizzing guitars, military drum patterns, hook laden choruses and the lyrics were quirky enough to attract attention.

Like the band themselves, the album Franz Ferdinand pulled off the trick off sounding clever but unpretentious, similarly quirky but accessible. The group also picked up the 2004 Mercury Music Album prize.

FF started to record their forth coming album and spent much of 2005 working in the studio in Scotland. To roughen up their sound, the group hired the services of Mars Volta producer Rich Costey. FF didn't feel too comfortable about the idea of going into the professional, but anodyne.

They reckoned that a studio was just a building with a fancy tape recorder and other gear in it. They wanted it to be like it was when they started out, hanging around in each other's flats, having a drink and making up a few tunes. They ended up going into the countryside and came up with You Could Have It So Much Better.

In between summer festival stints, including Reading and Leeds and trips to Australia and New Zealand, Franz Ferdinand planned to put the finishing touches to a new album in late 2006. The initial effects seemed to make 'You Could Have it So Much Better' a more inaccessible album than their debut.

The album You Could Have It So Much Better was overwhelmed with extra decoration, featuring a range of musical moods from wistful on Fade Together to romantic on 'Eleanor Put Your Boots On'. The music proved sufficiently anthemic to sway the doubters and satisfy the art-rock hardcore.

For their second album, Franz Ferdinand even received 'props' from the urban crowd and were hailed as Kanye West's favorite band. Kanye also revealed that 'white crunk' sound had influenced his latest work. The band has landed two Brits and an Ivor Novello Award.

One thing that Franz Ferdinand made us realize through their music is that pop music is best when it comes from a group of friends who feel they can do it just as well as the big guys. Groups like the Beatles, The Smiths, Nirvana, Ziggy and the Spiders, Pulp, Roxy Music indeed are those that make us hear that we had never heard before, but made it sound like pop.