Heart of a Punk - Soul of a Rasta

8th March 2009
Franz Ferdinand/The Soft Pack O2 Academy Birmingham

In 2004 I went to see FF at the Civic Wolverhampton, on pain of death I was told to return with a Franz Ferdinand T shirt for my son, I bought the smallest skinniest FF T shirt available, so death was not required. Tonight my companion wore the aforementioned T shirt for the first time in anger. The circle was complete my work was done.

"The Soft Pack" in support mode, turned out to be a bunch of four well drilled young American's that opened the night's proceedings in polished fashion. OK so they only briefly woke my lad and me from our slumbers but The Soft Pack played good, hard and tight for half an hour. The drummer sported a similar hair style to me so that was nice, they ventured off piste for a moment to play several bars of Black Sabbath's "Paranoid", which was also good. However this brief playing of Paranoid was lost completely on the youth in the crowd, and I think confused the older punters who were at the time contemplating whether it was a Hot Chocolate or Horlicks night and were suddenly forced to wonder why The Soft Pack had just come to a dead stop mid way through a song. Anyway on the evidence of 30 minutes The Soft Pack is a solid enough combo, a safe pair of four separate pairs of hands, cut The Soft Pack in two and INDIE would be written all the way through them. If their rucksack of songs is constantly replenished no doubt our paths will cross again.

9.10pm Alex Kapranos and Nick McCarthy both pale, thin, lithe and tartan shirted, clad like Adamson and Watson before them, emerge from the darkness; backed by the tartanless and tattooed Correcto hardened Paul Thompson and flanked by the equally tartan deficient "I'm not messing with this big fella" Robert Hardy. "Franz Ferdinand" assume their positions and set about hitting stuff hard and busting lungs. To start we have:

"Michael" I'll try most things once,
"Do you Want To?" - It'd be rude not to,
"Turn it on" - I'll do my best,
"Take Me Out" - go on then since you asked nicely,
"The Fallen" - nearly!
"Walk Away" - yes lets I need five minutes away from the mosh.

Tonight after only five tracks of pogoing like stink, a pregnant pause is required even for a fully trained international standard athlete like me - it's quite apparent a full and total recovery from the hard graft put in at The Killers has not been achieved. So let's take a moment.

FF's latest LP, the cleverly conceived progressive indie dance thing "Tonight" didn't get a full outing at the Academy, but most of its pertinent parts did get an airing. The singles "Ulysees" and "No you Girls", the extremely lyrically liberal minded "Send Him Away" also. For me the only disappointment of the "Tonight" material was "Lucid Dreams", on vinyl it is a monumental piece of dance pantomime, possibly the centre point of the album, but live it was just an indecipherable mess, how? Conversely "Twilight Owens" with its music conflicting vocal melody, I thought it might be difficult to recreate live, how wrong I was, it was captivatingly coherent and easily one of the best things on the night. As was the ever swelling "Outsiders" given the full "five men and a drum kit" treatment (I should have put the stopwatch Outsiders tonight it seems to get longer and longer each time it's played) - note to Guinness Book of Do Da, new category required for longest live rendition of "Outsiders".

Franz Ferdinand sometimes seem too cerebral in their approach to the writing, framing and styling their music, but essentially they are still a fluid live band and must be commended for tinkering and revising their songs rather than stamping them out "clone like" infinitum. The thought processes and time spent on producing "Tonight" was thought and time well spent. They innovated around whilst retaining the original core, a tricky trick to pull off. So now let us hope we don't have to wait as long for the next album, instead of a masterpiece of oil on canvas, how about a light free hand sketch knocked up in a few well chosen moments.

Finally on the night from their now distant debut they dusted off for the throngs delectation "This Fire", "Dark of the Matinee" and finally and most exquisitely "Jacqueline" all with great aplomb.
My cohort led me out of the Academy his 5 year old FF T shirt slightly damper than an hour or so before.

If you want to see Franz Ferdinand this summer, I most heartily recommend (credit crunch allowing) the Main Square Festival in ARRAS Northern France. If you want a festival that has a magnitude control, a festival where there is absolutely no possibility of standing in mud to watch the bands, a festival that has a perimeter fence constructed out of 17th century bars, pubs and cafes, this is the place to go!

http://www.mainsquarefestival.fr/2009