![]() I feel really self-conscious, I feel like everybody's staring at me or something.”Īn enforced period of retrospective analysis, the experience of crafting ‘Hits To The Head’ pushed Alex Kapranos into examining what makes Franz Ferdinand so special. I only ever come across it if I'm in a shop or café or something and somebody sticks it on. “As soon as I record it, that's it gone, I never listen to it again. “I actually don't listen to the music,” he smiles. It’s something that gives the new compilation an enjoyable eclecticism, shifting from piercing post-punk guitar lines to charging house-drenched electronics. Part of Franz Ferdinand’s breakneck evolution – from Glasgow art-pop to Parisian electro hub Motorbass Studios via New York and Tokyo – has been a continual disregard for the past. It's good to get your bearings and understand what you've done, so I enjoy that side of it.” It's a little bit like going on a walk up a hill and having a glance behind you to understand where you are and where you're going. “There's something positive about taking a retrospective look like this to see the past as it actually was and to understand what it is you actually made. “I don't like it because the whole concept of nostalgia is to recreate the past and to reconsider the past as something better than it actually was.” “I'm not a nostalgic person, I hate nostalgia,” he bites. Yet for all his passion for this period – and Alex Kapranos admits the idea of a book on those pre-Millennial communities still appeals to him – he’s not about to become enthralled by the past. The scene that Paul (Thomson, drummer) and I were in was very much part of the DIY scene in Glasgow and Edinburgh: music for the sake of music. “Maybe it didn't quite go to our heads to the extent it might've done because of that decade beforehand. “I'd been playing since I was 18 or 19 and I was 31 when our first album came out, so that's like a decade of doing it,” he shrugs. He clearly remains fond of that era – a time when blistering ley-lines of creative energy linked Glasgow’s 13th Note, which he booked for, to the Art School. Someone who really did tell Terry Wogan how he made it, Alex Kapranos spent the preceding decade playing scuzzy basement shows in Glasgow, part of a close-knit, furiously underground scene that eschewed outside recognition. But I think because none of us had been expecting it, we were all quite wryly amused by it all.” It seemed like the ultimate success, and then when everything went fucking nuts with 'Take Me Out' and the release of the album… At times I felt like I was observing somebody else's life. “I remember when 'Darts Of Pleasure' came out, we got to number 44 in the charts and I was over the moon, I couldn't believe that we had charted. ![]() “It's something none of us were expecting,” he recalls. We reflect on that show in Dundee’s Reading Rooms – the first time Franz Ferdinand ever sold merch, he recalls – and the colossal rush of hype that followed the release of their debut album, and breakout single ‘Take Me Out’. The impetus for the compilation came from the band’s 20th anniversary, with Franz Ferdinand opting to mark two decades of artfully awkward pop music, a run of singles both sizzlingly intelligent and dripping with style. It was the first time I'd heard the songs together in one place since I'd recorded them – or ever – so I definitely felt a little bit of that going on.” I love that and I guess, for me, making this compilation was a little bit like that. Taking 'Changes' as an example: you listen to 'Jean Genie' up to 'Young Americans' – they sound very different sonically and you can see the way is experimenting. It allows you to see the progression of the work from the earliest days to the present day, and also the forming of identity and the continuity of that identity. “But also, it does what a good retrospective does. Seeing all those songs together sounds so enriching… you just stick it on and it’s a party! It's an amazing album.” It exists not just as a compilation but as an album in its own right. They didn't have every album by Bowie, so they had 'Changes' which is probably my favourite compilation album. “Cause my folks didn't have the cash to spend on massive record collections. “I grew up with a lot of greatest hits compilation LPs!” he says. Surely, Clash profers, a Spotify playlist fulfils the same function? Reader, he is having none of it. Seated in an East London café, frontman Alex Kapranos is effusive in his praise for the humble compilation. For all their reputation as festival-smashing indie icons, they’ve got deep roots in Glasgow’s DIY communities, and a hefty record collection to their name as well. It's a dichotomy that new Best Of compilation ‘Hits To The Head’ brings home in emphatic fashion.
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