12 months ago Franz Ferdinand were tiny blips on the Glasgow indie radar, now they’re being begged by J.K. Rowling to write some music and drag up for the next Harry Potter movie. In between they’ve played 200-plus gigs, conquered the charts on both sides of the Atlantic and had as little time off for good behaviour as Johnny “Mad Dog” Adair.
If their rapid ascent has left Alex Kapranos & Co. gasping for air it doesn’t show as they launch into their Olympia set with a breakneck ‘Michael’. All that having to grab American audiences by the scruff of the neck has toughened them up to the point where on occasions they’re bizarrely redolent of Live & Dangerous-era Thin Lizzy. That muscularity doesn’t extend to their singer though who looks like he’s OD’d on Slimfast. Seriously Alex, get some pies down you!
‘This Boy’ is the first of two new songs aired tonight and jolly good it is too in a sleazy Television-y sort of a way. The crowd loves it, but then again the mood is so celebratory that Franz could do a panpipe version of The Tweenies theme and the place would go nuts.
‘Auf Achse’, ‘40ft’ and ‘Dark Of The Matinee’ duly dispatched it’s on to new song #2, ‘Your Diary’, which unless someone’s slipped something into my Babycham and I’m aurally hallucinating is a ringer for Big Country. Expect Radiohead to profess their undying love for Status Quo any day now.
I don’t know if the Health & Safety people are in, but the way the balcony bounces during ‘Take Me Out’ is cause for serious structural concern. Kapranos, the tart, milks their biggest hit for all its worth with the campest set of hops, kicks and bottom wiggles this side of Brett Anderson.
A similarly riotous ‘Darts Of Pleasure’ later and we’re in to encore territory. Having played just about everything that’s on the album, the band slip in ‘Shopping For Blood’, a Garry Glitter meets Giorgio Moroder B-side that allows Nick McCarthy to out-peacock Alex with his jerky electro-pop dancing. The outrageous shape throwing continues as they go in for the kill with ‘This Fire’, another song which all that touring has transmogrified into a rock monster. Thin Lizzy would be proud of them!