Albert Hall, Manchester
The oddball electropop veterans and Glasgow indie’s archest hit it off live as much as in the studio
Mergers seem to be catching on in pop. 2014’s amalgamation of pop-punk boy bands Busted and McFly as McBusted now fills arenas. Hot on their heels come FFS, the cheeky moniker under which two of pop’s more renowned art-rock bands, Glasgow’s Franz Ferdinand and Los Angeles veterans Sparks, now trade. Although welding bands together like some sort of Frankenstein pop monster seems like the sort of thing you’d get a mad scientist doing, this coupling makes sense. Franz started life covering the Mael brothers’ Achoo and banged on about Sparks’ influence even though the mainstream hordes who bought Franz’s 2004 hit Take Me Out may have thought they meant a firm of electricians.
If Franz’s critical and commercial halo has slipped in recent years, their pioneering pop counterparts have spent the last few years innovating in everything from classical to pop opera without quite finding the sort of foothold in popular culture their glam and disco-era hits did in the 70s and early 80s. The appeal of a union suiting both parties must have grown even stronger when their recent eponymous album appeared to some of the best reviews of the 20-odd long-players they’ve notched up between them.
Continue reading...by Dave Simpson via Electronic music | The Guardian
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