Philadelphia Weekly

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“How did Scottish people ever have sex before the existence of Franz Ferdinand?” asked an especially impudent hack for Spin magazine, while reviewing the Glaswegian pop fop’s latest offering of salacious post-punk-funk, Tonight.

“Cheeky bastard!” splutters the band’s drummer Paul Thomson, on the phone from his suitably stylish (trust me, I checked the hotel’s website…) boutique hotel room in Seattle. “Oooh, that’s a bit harsh isn’t it? Mind you, I don’t really want anyone thinking about me having sex, let alone any other Scottish person, but still…”

Flippancy and cheap humor aside (not to mention the fact that said journo is obviously an errant gobshite), the man from Spin does have a point of sorts; to whit – there’s an unavoidable, undeniable degree of loucheness, flair, and unabashed glamour surrounding the band. During the past five years or so since the release of their still superb self-titled debut, Franz Ferdinand have become a byword for smart, sexy, literate guitar pop, a winning combination of the likes of early Roxy Music, Berlin-era Bowie, Pulp, and the post-punk stylings of vintage Postcard Records. A band whose brand of art school funk has been aimed squarely at the head, heart, and groin, unafraid of populism, reaching out to the hipsters and the hoi polloi. A band, most importantly, unashamed of being bona fide pop stars.

Franz Ferdinand - No You Girls

“Yeah, oh yeah, absolutely, “ says Thomson. “But that’s all an extension of how we’ve always been honest about what excites or inspires us, and that translates into our whole attitude, how we dress, how we look, it’s important. Sometimes people are aghast at how involved we are with what we wear, how we look, how our sleeve art looks, how our videos look, but it is really important. The point is, if you don’t get involved, someone else will do it for you and it might just be terrible. Plus, this is what you wanted, what you dreamed about when you were younger and you wanted to be in a band and were drawing band’s names and logos on your school jotter, y’know? It’s not contrived, it’s just the way we are. We’re totally involved in everything we do.”

And quite right too. The new album Tonight, in case you were wondering, is an extension of this ethos, less a radical departure from ground covered previously, more a refinement of what they do so well, with an added layer of gloss and sheen courtesy of in demand producer Dan Carey (Hot Chip, Lilly Allen, Kylie “pixie princess of pop” Minogue…). It’s dark, it’s sleazy, it’s wired, and for a bunch of skinny white boys, it’s pretty damned funky. As good as it sounds on record, however, you can bet it’s going to sound even better live, an area in which the band excel. In direct contrast to all too many generic indie artists, the kind of groups who frequently treat their audiences with barely disguised contempt and seem hell bent on boring them to death, Franz Ferdinand revel in the spotlight giving nothing less than 110 percent, generating ridiculous levels of intensity, whether it’s playing to 100 crazed Hebrideans in a village hall on the Isle of Skye, or winning over thousands of U2 fans in a Latin American enormodome (on a more local level, think back to 2004/2005 when in the space of a year they destroyed a sweating room at Making Time, and later wowed the hipsterati at the Tower…)

“Well,” says Thomson, “We’ve always believed it was our duty to really vamp it up onstage and be as exhibitionist as we’d let ourselves get away with. Like, particularly at the beginning, a big live influence on us was Queen, just that whole preposterous angle, y’know? I mean, it’s one of the best things about being in a band, being in this band anyway. The whole aspect about getting ready to go out onstage, deciding what to wear, creating a different persona, becoming a different person onstage. Like, especially when you’re playing to bigger crowds, y’really have to turn it on and over exaggerate everything just to reach out to people at the back of the gig. You just can’t stand there, y’know?”

Quite. Above all, Franz Ferdinand appear to be as enthused as ever with their music, have taken to global success with considerable aplomb and an admirable lack of egomaniacal idiocy, and still appear utterly unashamed of making razor-sharp, witty pop aimed at the dance floor. “Music,” too paraphrase an early mission statement of sorts, “to make girls dance.” And really, when it all comes down to it, when you really get down to the heart of the matter, is there any nobler an aspiration for the wannabe pop group than that?

Franz Ferdinand: Wed., May 5, 8pm. $25. With Born Ruffians. Electric Factory, 421 N. Seventh St. 215.627.1332. www.livenation.com