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Vice Blog

LONDON - FRANZ FERDINAND COMEBACK

I went to see Franz Ferdinand's secret comeback show last night. I've always thought that they're a band who struggle with songs, it's like they understand what makes a great record because they spent the late 70’s giggling in a record shop, but when they try and do it themselves it gets clumsy and confused. Last night, looking like a whippet Anne Robinson, Alex Kapranos lead his band back into the live arena (well, The End, it's pretty small).

Club shows are often a disappointment (just ask the people still queuing outside the club, desperate to see Kapranos’ taut artrock eyebrow). Even the support act Fan Death were drowned from view on the club’s minimal stage, by the time Franz came on the building was shivering. It was all as arch as you'd expect from a band who've called their third record Tonight: Franz Ferdinand. When did Britain's most fondly loved bands become distant art dudes? Bands who are thought of in Queen Mother terms used to be grand monsters of glam, poncing about the charts in nine foot golden shoes, now they're the skinny chaps who used to live on John Peel's floor.

I know it will kill every editor of a dull monthly magazine out there who's already seen their new breed of unit shifters (Razorlight, Snow Patrol, er, does the nation still like Keane?) grow apart from their audience, but I'm not sure that 'art-house electro' is the direction Franz should have moved in. Rehashing post-punk’s left field trajectory, just as you rehashed it’s right-field base, is as surprising as Rod Stewart eating a sausage. The question is, if they fuck up their return as well, who exactly is the English industry going to make money from? JLS?