With the ‘Hit To The Head’ anthology published last March, Franz Ferdinand save time and keep the ranks tight. He never made it past his debut album released in 2004 in the year of grace, or his second album if we hurry, but on stage, he tackles a combination of his trophies, the machine is unlikely to leak gas. According to organizer Live Nation, this Tuesday, after eight years in the city, did not fail to reunite in Barcelona at a Sant Jordi Club that did not fill up and hosts 4,000 people.
The silver screen, the expressionist shadows, and the group (now a quintet) attacking one of the ancient pearls, the ‘dark side of the matinee’. A quick welcome animated by Alex Kapranos with a curious exchange of language (“merci, bona nit, we’re Franz Ferdinand from Glasgow, Scotland”), from that moment on post-punk lighting with ‘led’ lines from the cold war Berlin club. One of the two new songs in the compilation, ‘Curious’ clean funk, has a slight friction with the emotional depth of ‘Walk away’ and from there to the ‘darkest’ moment, ‘Evil eye’, Crazy ‘Do you want to’ and its ‘you’re so lucky’ ‘You’re lucky, you’re lucky’, he tensed, muttering like a magic slogan by the crowd on a ‘Do you want’ road.
Kapranos, lord and master
From this tour, Franz Ferdinand is no longer the ‘gang’ who introduced himself, a kind of Karpranos Band: After the last trade (now with Audrey Tait to the women’s drumsticks), only she and bassist Bob Hardy survive from the old days. But her figure holds up and even grows into stares, wearing a tenor voice and subduing the masses, following the David Bowie (and Scott Walker) she admires. Total leader backed by a combo that now has a full-time guitarist and keyboard player new shadowsfor example, it was appreciated in the ‘krautrock’ phrases of ‘Ulysses’ and the tortured ‘Strangers’.
Since that punk-funk with avant-garde edges was skeptical of the past from the beginning, there was a “revival” of the session, but it was intense and did not seem outdated. In the background was a tense anguish that was not alien to today’s world. The classics deserve to surpass the status of generational anthems (‘Take me out’, ‘This fire’) and the band opened the door to the future with another new song, that beautiful ‘Billy bye’, although the band beckoned to Bowie once again.