Speaker 1: Loud and Quiet presents Midnight Chats.
Speaker 2: I was feeling quite nostalgic in the run up to
Speaker 2: recording this latest episode of Midnight Chats, mostly because the
Speaker 2: last few weeks I've had my nose stuck in Lizzie
Speaker 2: Goodman's book Meet Me in the Bathroom Now, If you
Speaker 2: haven't come across It yet, released earlier this year. It's
Speaker 2: the story of the rebirth of rock and roll in
Speaker 2: New York City from two thousand and one to twenty eleven,
Speaker 2: told via a series of interviews with the people who
Speaker 2: were there. So we're talking about the Strokes, Yaya Yeahs,
Speaker 2: LCD sound System interval, the Rapture TV on the radio,
Speaker 2: all starting with artists Live Jonathan fire Eater. Everyone has
Speaker 2: their era of music growing up, and this was mine.
Speaker 2: If you've not come across it yet, stick it on
Speaker 2: the Christmas list. It is really good. My guest on
Speaker 2: this podcast is actually in it. He wasn't in one
Speaker 2: of those New York bands, but he was in the
Speaker 2: thick of the scene at the time, and it got
Speaker 2: me thinking also about the first time that I saw
Speaker 2: Franz Ferdinand. I was a student in Cardiff and they
Speaker 2: by then at this point in late two thousand and five,
Speaker 2: they were an arena rock band Take Me Out You'll
Speaker 2: remember Crash the top three in the charts a couple
Speaker 2: of years before, and the Glasgow band had won the
Speaker 2: Mercury Prize for their self titled debut album, bagged brit
Speaker 2: Awards after that, got nominated for Grammys and supported You
Speaker 2: Too on a stadium tour.
Speaker 3: So massive stuff.
Speaker 2: But as you're about to hear, Alex Caprana says he's
Speaker 2: not a nostalgic person and he doesn't spend a lot
Speaker 2: of time looking back on all that stuff. My guess
Speaker 2: is that's why Franz Ferdinand's new album, which is out
Speaker 2: early next year, their first in five years, is called
Speaker 2: Always Ascending, a deliberate hint maybe towards their plan to
Speaker 2: always keep moving forward. Anyway, last weekend Alex rode up
Speaker 2: to our offices here in East London on his bike,
Speaker 2: warmed up on our sofa with a cup of tea
Speaker 2: and we had this conversation. He just got back from
Speaker 2: Europe and we talked about lots of stuff, including his
Speaker 2: travels to Cuba right back at the start of the year.
Speaker 2: What it's been like changing the lineup of the band
Speaker 2: the past eighteen months and going through that, and also
Speaker 2: how he's learned that having a dog in the studio
Speaker 2: can actually help you make.
Speaker 3: A better album.
Speaker 2: Lots of stuff in between as well. Just finally, this
Speaker 2: is the penultimate episode of Midnight Chats this year. There
Speaker 2: will be one more after this, a twenty seventeen special,
Speaker 2: a bumper deluxe edition where Stewart and I who take
Speaker 2: it in terms recording, this podcast will revisit some of
Speaker 2: the highlights from the series this year. Fortunately there's been
Speaker 2: a few of those, so we're looking forward to putting
Speaker 2: that together and keep your ears peeled for that. Until then,
Speaker 2: I should leave you with Midnight Chats Episode thirty eight
Speaker 2: with Alex Kapranos.
Speaker 3: Thing's been how are you? Yeah? Pretty good? Nice to
Speaker 3: be in London on a beautiful clear Sonny coul D
Speaker 3: my favorite kenned Dy. So yeah, I'm in a good mood.
Speaker 3: It's been out in the last few days weeks, well
Speaker 3: the last couple of weeks. I've been in Europe talking
Speaker 3: about when you record, Yeah, you get to do all
Speaker 3: the fun bit of making a record, and then you
Speaker 3: have to talk about it again and again, which I
Speaker 3: still really love. I mean, I love that people are
Speaker 3: excited and want to talk about it, but it can
Speaker 3: be quite It makes you doubt your identity to agree
Speaker 3: when you say, I think it's just unusual to talk
Speaker 3: about yourself for long periods of time. Yeah, actually know
Speaker 3: that's not true. I have some friends who love talking
Speaker 3: about themselves. Maybe I should get them to do this.
Speaker 2: When you're to presumably you kind of heading to Europe
Speaker 2: for a week or two whatever, and you're essentially traveling
Speaker 2: around radio stations and speaking to magazines and whatnot about
Speaker 2: the new record When you're there, is there anywhere in
Speaker 2: Europe in particular where you can kind of like sneak
Speaker 2: off for a few hours and go and see some
Speaker 2: friends or go to like an attraction or gallery. Is
Speaker 2: this anyway you particularly like going because you know, oh,
Speaker 2: I know I can catch up with so and so,
Speaker 2: or I can go and see a bit of this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's funny, like like over the years of touring,
Speaker 3: you do tend to find you have your neighborhoods and
Speaker 3: cities around the world, and also your friends around the
Speaker 3: place as well, and people move around and so you
Speaker 3: have new friends or old friends and new places. So
Speaker 3: I was in Berlin last week, and yeah, I wanted
Speaker 3: to hang out with my friend Michael Miki, who's one
Speaker 3: of my those friends. I used to hang out with
Speaker 3: him in Berlin in the late nineties early two thousands.
Speaker 3: But he was going to see Noibout and I couldn't
Speaker 3: get tickets. I know, I know it would have been
Speaker 3: really good, and also I wouldn't have been able to
Speaker 3: get away in time. But my friend Sam Potter from
Speaker 3: Late of the Pier, he's now living in Berlin, so
Speaker 3: I got to hang out with Sam. And you know,
Speaker 3: it's always to go to places, you know, like if
Speaker 3: I was in Berlin, I always end up in eight millimeter.
Speaker 3: Ord's Giftda's gift is the bar barry from Magua opened
Speaker 3: up a little while ago. But then Sam took us
Speaker 3: to some new places. Good to discover new place there
Speaker 3: was in Paris, and got to hang out with Philippe,
Speaker 3: who we just made the record with. Yeah, I feel
Speaker 3: quite at home in Paris at the moment because we
Speaker 3: spent quite a few weeks there earlier in the year recording.
Speaker 3: So this is Philip Ziddar that you've done the record with,
Speaker 3: Philip M. Zadar, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, what's he likes a character?
Speaker 2: I mean people will be familiar with his name because
Speaker 2: of his work with Cassius obviously, but like as a
Speaker 2: producer and working with Frans Ferdinand and as a character.
Speaker 2: What kind of guy is he?
Speaker 3: He? He's genial, extrovert, force of nature, a great person.
Speaker 3: Having the studio he's kind of like the you know,
Speaker 3: most social groups or sort of like groups people you
Speaker 3: go out with, there's usually one person who, if they
Speaker 3: are going out with you, will transform the evening into
Speaker 3: something a little bit more fucked up than it might
Speaker 3: be an otherwise the kind of night where somebody ends
Speaker 3: up getting arrested or in hospital or bringing or something
Speaker 3: like that. Oh yeah, having some transformative life experience. He's
Speaker 3: the kind of guy who is the catalyst for that
Speaker 3: sort of thing. The wild card. Yeah, yeah, he is.
Speaker 3: And you can tell that he's always been like that
Speaker 3: in his life as well. Quite interesting life too, you know,
Speaker 3: he had to go in the army when he was
Speaker 3: young before he did any studio work, and was a
Speaker 3: medic and the Paratrip regiment as well, and all these
Speaker 3: sorts of things. He's had a really interesting and bizarre life.
Speaker 3: But to have a character and the studio is great
Speaker 3: because for me, that's what you're really looking for from
Speaker 3: a producer. You want that kind of wild person who's
Speaker 3: going to push you to do something you wouldn't normally
Speaker 3: do if they weren't there, you know, Like do.
Speaker 2: You always look for that as opposed to I mean
Speaker 2: there must be some geys who are looking for somebody
Speaker 2: who follows their lead, is there to kind of deliver
Speaker 2: what their vision is? Where is there are other artists
Speaker 2: who they want the producers to be involved but actually
Speaker 2: be like a person of creative friction, just somebody who
Speaker 2: actually be like, oh, okay, that's not the idea I have,
Speaker 2: but I do now because this person's actually challenging.
Speaker 3: It's true. And like I've some great guys in the
Speaker 3: studio that have had different rules and different approaches, like
Speaker 3: guys like Rich Costume and Mark Ralph that there coming
Speaker 3: at it much more from a I guess, a purely
Speaker 3: sonic perspective, and they're really interested in shaping the sound
Speaker 3: and getting something that sounds beautiful to your ears. But
Speaker 3: they're not really they want to leave it to maybe
Speaker 3: the most Steve Albini. He's the most extreme in that
Speaker 3: that sort of world. I've never worked with him, but
Speaker 3: he always credits himself as an engineer and not not
Speaker 3: a producer, even though he has this just to sound
Speaker 3: I think you also have. But I feel for producers
Speaker 3: themselves that you have the active ones. The ones who
Speaker 3: play an active role have two approaches. They're either adversarial
Speaker 3: or avuncular. You know, they either want to be your
Speaker 3: friend and help you along to get to something together,
Speaker 3: whether they become part of the gang, the social group,
Speaker 3: the pack of dogs all moving towards the same thing,
Speaker 3: which Philip definitely is. And then you have the more
Speaker 3: of the fuel spectral approach of putting a gun against
Speaker 3: your head till you play that chord right.
Speaker 2: When you're in Europe? Did you record any podcasts with today?
Speaker 2: Any of those crop up? Oh?
Speaker 3: No, I have. I didn't record any podcast I did
Speaker 3: one radio show which was quite cool. Yeah, I just
Speaker 3: got to take over a Dutch radio show and play
Speaker 3: records that I wanted. But no podcasts as yet, but
Speaker 3: I think there are some some more on the horizon.
Speaker 3: Are you generally a fan do you listen to that?
Speaker 3: I do listen to podcasts, but my listening tends to
Speaker 3: go it tends to depend upon what I'm doing with
Speaker 3: my life. So from January onwards, I'll be touring a
Speaker 3: lot and we'll be listening to a lot more podcasts
Speaker 3: than I am at the moment. When we have people
Speaker 3: on the podcast, they often talk.
Speaker 2: About the music world that they shape around them, and
Speaker 2: by that I mean like whether they go record shoping
Speaker 2: or if they listen to radio where they read things. Interviews.
Speaker 2: We had Nadine Shah on a while ago. She was
Speaker 2: talking about how she's like an avid gig goer, and
Speaker 2: she was surprised to learn that a lot of people,
Speaker 2: when we speak to them, a lot of artists don't
Speaker 2: tend to go and see other bands, which I don't
Speaker 2: know what you're like, but obviously, as somebody who certainly
Speaker 2: has put on numerous gigs over the years and is
Speaker 2: kind of like a fan of other artists, I imagine you
Speaker 2: probably do see quite a lot of bands. But some
Speaker 2: people really want to close down and not really have
Speaker 2: any music infiltrate their brain when they're trying to create
Speaker 2: something themselves, and others are the opposite way. They want
Speaker 2: to consume everything and just find those moments of inspiration.
Speaker 3: What do you like Yeah, I like going to gigs,
Speaker 3: but I kind of go to gigs for the reason
Speaker 3: I've always going to gigs because it's a laugh. I
Speaker 3: really enjoy it, you know, it makes me feel good
Speaker 3: going to a gig. And so when we were in Paris,
Speaker 3: I remember Paul and I went down to pan FM
Speaker 3: to see moon Landings just because we know it would
Speaker 3: be a good night and it was what great band.
Speaker 3: I loved it. And I went to a gig last
Speaker 3: night up in the Finsbury Yeah, yeah, which I'd never
Speaker 3: been to for a gig before, like a nice backroom,
Speaker 3: like classic old London pub back room kind of thing.
Speaker 3: I want to see Maggie Brown and she was really cool. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I loved it. But I know what you mean though
Speaker 3: about not wanting to bring something else in, because sometimes
Speaker 3: you do feel your your brain is saturated. And I'm
Speaker 3: also wary about when you're at certain points in the
Speaker 3: creative process of you know how the things you shouldn't
Speaker 3: put in the fridge because they have too strong a flavor.
Speaker 3: It's like like you don't put blue cheese next to
Speaker 3: the butter or whatever because I don't know, whatever, it's bananas.
Speaker 3: That's another one, like like bananas are going to make
Speaker 3: your margarine taste funny. I sometimes feel it's like that
Speaker 3: if you if you over listen to a piece of
Speaker 3: music while you're recording. I'm wary of it because I
Speaker 3: don't want that that flavor to enter my creative fridge.
Speaker 2: The idea is, yeah, you have the distinction of being
Speaker 2: our final guest of the year. Just in terms of
Speaker 2: this year twenty seventeen. Take us back to like right
Speaker 2: at the start. Can you remember heading into January and thinking,
Speaker 2: you know, what does the year ahead hoold for you?
Speaker 2: Going back to that point? What?
Speaker 3: Yeah, kind of what was the start of the year
Speaker 3: like for you? Yeah? Started? It was amazing because I
Speaker 3: was in Cuba. Oh I was in Cuba last year.
Speaker 3: Oh were you?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, one incredible place. Yeah yeah. My girlfriend and I
Speaker 3: last minutes, Oh yeah, we should go somewhere else. For
Speaker 3: the last ten no more years, I would host Christmas
Speaker 3: and New Year at a place in Scotland and have
Speaker 3: the family there, and then family members couldn't make it,
Speaker 3: so we weren't going to have a family thing, so
Speaker 3: I said, and so yeah, my girlfriend have it like, yeah,
Speaker 3: let's go away, Let's go to Cuba. And I wanted
Speaker 3: to go somewhere that had never been before and had
Speaker 3: never played in the band. And yeah, so on the
Speaker 3: night at the time of the bells, we were watching
Speaker 3: this incredible sort of percussive Cuban band playing and it
Speaker 3: felt really wild and how New Year should be full
Speaker 3: of energy and optimism despite the wider political situation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I know that like Cuba is a
Speaker 2: kind of emerging tourist destination. It's opened up in recent years.
Speaker 2: That's why a lot more people are going, probably why
Speaker 2: you and I thought we'd go sort of thing. But
Speaker 2: what did you make of it as a place? Did
Speaker 2: you find it a curious place to visit with a
Speaker 2: certain things about society that you thought were interesting were different.
Speaker 2: What was your kind of lasting impression of it?
Speaker 3: Yeah, there were quite a few fascinating things, some surprises,
Speaker 3: some things that you expected to see. I mean, even
Speaker 3: on a physical level, there were everything that you were expecting.
Speaker 3: Even the things that were expecting were there, they weren't
Speaker 3: quite how you imagined that they would be. The most
Speaker 3: obvious thing, and it's maybe a good metaphor for the
Speaker 3: society in general, is the cars that you see over there,
Speaker 3: the old fifties cars, which Cuba is famous for, particularly Havana.
Speaker 3: I got chatting to a guy on the side of
Speaker 3: the road about chatting. I know five words of Spanish.
Speaker 3: It was kind of in sign language, really, but he
Speaker 3: was showing me his car. Was obviously really proud of this,
Speaker 3: this old fifties cars, and like a lot of the cars,
Speaker 3: it looks like a toll banger, but I really cared
Speaker 3: for banger and lots of hours of love and preservation
Speaker 3: gone into it. But when he lifted up the bonnet,
Speaker 3: he showed me the engine, and the engine wasn't the
Speaker 3: original engine. And most of those cars don't have the
Speaker 3: original engines. They have what's essentially Soviet era tractor engines
Speaker 3: in them, and when they're driving around, they're producing these
Speaker 3: clouds and clouds of diesel fumes everywhere, and all city
Speaker 3: has this air of diesel around it. And yeah, I
Speaker 3: think Cuba is a good example of a place where
Speaker 3: you arrive with expectations and they're subtly confounded. Good music
Speaker 3: as well. I love the music. I found that incredible,
Speaker 3: fascinating place there. Yeah, I loved it. An amazing place.
Speaker 2: When you got back from Cuba, then was it down
Speaker 2: to work. Was it to bring people up to speed
Speaker 2: obviously with Franz for Nick left the band in the
Speaker 2: middle of last year, and you've got two new members
Speaker 2: of the band.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Do you start recording the new record at the end
Speaker 2: of twenty sixteen or has that been a whole twenty
Speaker 2: seventeen thing?
Speaker 3: So, oh gosh, sure. Beginning of twenty seventeen, I suppose
Speaker 3: we were right in the middle of kind of getting
Speaker 3: the final stages of the record together. Julian who now
Speaker 3: plays keyboards with us, he joined us around about August.
Speaker 3: We'd been working on the record, getting things together since
Speaker 3: the end of twenty fifteen, when we finished touring the
Speaker 3: FFS thing. And so when I got back beginning of
Speaker 3: twenty seventeen, we had most of the songs written and
Speaker 3: we were getting ourselves in a shape to record. And
Speaker 3: I guess we could have gone into the studio at
Speaker 3: that time. We could have actually gone into the studio
Speaker 3: a lot earlier, but we wanted to do it in
Speaker 3: a kind of flipped way. It's when I was I
Speaker 3: was doing a thing the other day and met Felix
Speaker 3: from the Maccabees, and he said something that the kind
Speaker 3: of struck me. He said, he's talking about when bands
Speaker 3: make an album and he's talking about touring, and he
Speaker 3: was saying, Yeah, bands spent ages making an album and
Speaker 3: then they spent a year touring and by the end
Speaker 3: of that year, they've learned how to play the songs.
Speaker 3: And what we wanted to was kind of like to
Speaker 3: subvert that's because it's true, that's that is what bands do.
Speaker 3: You do all this stuff in the studio and then
Speaker 3: you kind of go, oh shit, how are we going
Speaker 3: to play this now? And we wanted to do the opposite.
Speaker 3: We wanted to write the songs, like create a songbook,
Speaker 3: and that's what we was stuck doing write the end
Speaker 3: of twenty fifteen, So like have a song where that
Speaker 3: could be played in any form, so that you can have,
Speaker 3: you know, play them as a purely electronic song, play
Speaker 3: them with a different tempo, play them acoustically, play them
Speaker 3: elect well, whatever you want, because the song would be
Speaker 3: strong enough to stand up to it. So write the songs,
Speaker 3: then work out how you're going to perform it, and
Speaker 3: work out a sound that's new to you. Because with us,
Speaker 3: it's the beginning of a new decade for the band
Speaker 3: and new new lineup, literally a new decade. Last album
Speaker 3: we did was the end of ten years of the band,
Speaker 3: so this one feels like, yeah, the beginning of a
Speaker 3: new decade. So you get a new sound, and we
Speaker 3: wanted to be able to play it and play it
Speaker 3: live and tight and really good, like we'd been on
Speaker 3: the road for a year, and so when we went
Speaker 3: into the studio, which was the beginning of March this year,
Speaker 3: we tracked in six days. But we could only do
Speaker 3: that because we've been spending a year and a half
Speaker 3: getting it together as well.
Speaker 2: And Julian and Dina who have now joined the band,
Speaker 2: were they friends from before? Like, how did you get
Speaker 2: to know them? Did you have to audition anybody?
Speaker 3: Ha? Did that process with? It's funny. I was watching
Speaker 3: I've never seen it before, but I watched Some kind
Speaker 3: of Monster when we were on the two of Us recently. Yeah,
Speaker 3: the Metallica film so amazing, so funny and so depressing simultaneously,
Speaker 3: like a great, great film. But there's the section where
Speaker 3: they're auditioning a new basis and the poor producer guys,
Speaker 3: his face is really glum because he can tell he
Speaker 3: wants to be the bassist all along but when they're
Speaker 3: auditioning him, they came in to play old classic Metallica songs.
Speaker 3: And I just realized the other day that that's the
Speaker 3: opposite of what we did when we were looking for
Speaker 3: a new member. Julian didn't play any of the old
Speaker 3: songs until we actually had a gig to do. And
Speaker 3: so we spent all these months getting a record together
Speaker 3: and not once had we even like mentioned one of
Speaker 3: the old songs. Never mine played them. And as for
Speaker 3: an audition, well, we we went for a curry mother
Speaker 3: India's curry show in mother in Hiscafe rather in Glasgow
Speaker 3: who he used to deliver curries for a long time ago.
Speaker 3: And yeah, so because I think it's key. You know,
Speaker 3: a band is a group, it's a gang, it's a
Speaker 3: it's a social group, and you've got to get on.
Speaker 3: And so I wanted to see if we got on
Speaker 3: with Julian and had laugh And then a couple of
Speaker 3: days later my studios down to southwest Scotland near Doune
Speaker 3: Free starts away near a small village and the first
Speaker 3: thing we did when we got down there was go
Speaker 3: to the pub and have a few more drinks and
Speaker 3: see how we got on and you know, we knew
Speaker 3: we were having a laugh. We knew that we got
Speaker 3: on and then we went in and played music and yeah,
Speaker 3: that was cool. But it was new music and new things.
Speaker 3: But I hadn't met Julian before. I knew his work,
Speaker 3: before he played with us. He had a solo project
Speaker 3: called Miamiao on Chemical Underground Records. And last year I
Speaker 3: was over in Ireland for a film called Lost in France,
Speaker 3: which was kind of about some of the history of
Speaker 3: the Glasgow music scene. It's particularly about Chemical Underground Records.
Speaker 3: But I was over and we were visiting this place
Speaker 3: where a few of us had played twenty years earlier,
Speaker 3: this small town in Moron. Anyway, I was over in
Speaker 3: Galway for the premiere of this film and that sounds
Speaker 3: really grand. Premiere of the film was actually sewn and
Speaker 3: literally shown in the back of a caravan, a very
Speaker 3: big caravan admittedly, but it was. It was really cool.
Speaker 3: The Golbie Film Festival. If you think of going to
Speaker 3: the film festival, it's it's my kind of film festival.
Speaker 3: It's always an amazing talent as well. Anyway, I was
Speaker 3: there with a student from Maguay and Emma and Paul
Speaker 3: from the Delgados, and I said to them in passing, oh,
Speaker 3: do you know anyone in Glasgow who would be cool
Speaker 3: to meet music with? And all of them said, yeah,
Speaker 3: Julian because Emmon Paul had worked at them before with
Speaker 3: Chemical Underground, and Stuart's girlfriend had been working with them too,
Speaker 3: and yeah, worked out recommendations not auditions.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was gonna say, it's interesting to hear you
Speaker 2: say that, like you're not trepidation, but you're kind of
Speaker 2: The important thing to do was first ascertain are we
Speaker 2: going to get along? Are we going to have a laugh?
Speaker 2: Are we going to all enjoy this ride together? Rather
Speaker 2: than being like can they play the songs really tight?
Speaker 2: Because bringing new people in the involvement, the key thing
Speaker 2: is going to be at points living in each other's
Speaker 2: pockets for the next eighteen months or whatever.
Speaker 3: It's partly for selfish reasons, you know, like like, well,
Speaker 3: not not selfish reason, for the reasons of everybody involved.
Speaker 3: You know, you've got to get on because you are
Speaker 3: literally going to be together. But also it has to
Speaker 3: be a joy. It has to be an enjoyable thing
Speaker 3: to do. And I think you always here when a
Speaker 3: band's having a miserable time. It comes through in the music.
Speaker 3: But also seriously, I do believe that a band is
Speaker 3: a product of it's A band has a personality, and
Speaker 3: it's a product of the multiplication of the personalities that
Speaker 3: are in it, and you have to get those personalities right.
Speaker 3: And also, like I could say, you could play he
Speaker 3: was a good, good enough musician, you know, I can
Speaker 3: show them how to play the parts and the way
Speaker 3: we play. That's not going to be that's something you
Speaker 3: just work out.
Speaker 2: You have the kind of first decade of France then
Speaker 2: and then you're inviting two new people into the gang,
Speaker 2: if you like. What was the feeling like doing that?
Speaker 2: Because a band is like a family unit in a way,
Speaker 2: do you think that having because you've done throughout your career,
Speaker 2: you've always collaborated with various people, like, you know, even
Speaker 2: in just the past couple of years you mentioned FFS banquet,
Speaker 2: you know, even performing as part of things like the
Speaker 2: Jim Jimush thing they did.
Speaker 3: As a barberan this year.
Speaker 2: Do you think the experience of working with other people
Speaker 2: all the time made you more open to the idea
Speaker 2: of bringing in new members to your sort of family unit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sure, I guess you you form and take part
Speaker 3: in different gangs along the way. The FFS thing was
Speaker 3: was was very refreshing to collaborate with with other people
Speaker 3: and also people who kind of grew up. That's that's
Speaker 3: pretty bizarre, you know, like to collaborate with people who
Speaker 3: are so familiar with you because you've grown up listening
Speaker 3: to their music and then they're actually there in person.
Speaker 3: That don't they And there's there's definitely some quite surreal
Speaker 3: moments when you do something like that. But to be
Speaker 3: able to collaborate with other people people and know that
Speaker 3: it works is quite refreshing, and it gives you. It
Speaker 3: gives you sucker, it gives you strength to see that, yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, we can do this again. And if you
Speaker 3: ever attempt anything like that, you the only way to
Speaker 3: make it work is to be open and embrace your
Speaker 3: your your vulnerability. And if you're showing your vulnerability, then
Speaker 3: other people will show theirs as well, and that's when
Speaker 3: you make something strong together. It's funnly like, I do
Speaker 3: think it was a gang, but I do think of
Speaker 3: it as a pack as well, particularly and it's partly
Speaker 3: because when we were recording before Dino joined the Fifth
Speaker 3: member was Alvi. Alvi is Bob's dog, and so Alvi
Speaker 3: was actually in the studio with us, so a lot
Speaker 3: of the time when we were writing the songs on
Speaker 3: this record. So yeah, Bob would come down and from
Speaker 3: Glasgow to my place and bring Alvi with him. And
Speaker 3: I remember, like, after you've been doing it for a
Speaker 3: couple of weeks, just like, are you sure that always
Speaker 3: under this, like like you know, like it's it is?
Speaker 3: He okay, like hanging out and and being in the
Speaker 3: studio and and I know he'd win sometimes when Paul
Speaker 3: would get behind the drum kit, but generally you'd be
Speaker 3: just kind of like sitting there and you're going going
Speaker 3: for a walk and whatever, and uh and Bob, are
Speaker 3: you kidding? He totally loves it. Was oh really and
Speaker 3: he's like yeah, because he's part of the pack. And
Speaker 3: I was like, oh, God, of course, yeah, that's how
Speaker 3: he sees it. He sees it. We're all a pack together,
Speaker 3: and dogs are pack animals, and I think we're kind
Speaker 3: of pack animals. I think not all musicians, but band
Speaker 3: members are pack animals. But to go back to the
Speaker 3: vulnerability thing, if you look at the way that dogs
Speaker 3: behave in a pack when they get to sort of
Speaker 3: meet each other, or you think of like if you're
Speaker 3: going to say hello to a dog, you've got to
Speaker 3: pet a dog, and the dog wants to be a friend.
Speaker 3: What do they do. The first thing they do is
Speaker 3: they roll on their back, waggle their waggle their legs
Speaker 3: in the air, and look to how their tommy scratch
Speaker 3: or whatever. But what they're actually doing with that is
Speaker 3: fascinating because they're actually showing their vulnerability. They're exposing. In
Speaker 3: the wild, what they would be doing is they'd be
Speaker 3: exposing all of their you know, soft organs and saying
Speaker 3: to the other dogs like like, hey, I am no
Speaker 3: threat here, I am totally vulnerable. I'm not gonna go
Speaker 3: for you. And that's how you make a packwork. Everybody
Speaker 3: has to show their vulnerability and say, hey, we're all
Speaker 3: in this together. We can all attack if we want to,
Speaker 3: but here's our vulnerability. Let's let's embrace it and let's
Speaker 3: let's share it.
Speaker 2: I mean, I love that Elvi was the kind of
Speaker 2: key figure in the record as well defining moment in it.
Speaker 3: It was I mean, do you know the first band
Speaker 3: that that that's termed me on Like how good a
Speaker 3: dog is in the recording studio? Was the Cribs About
Speaker 3: just just over ten years ago. I produced the Cribs
Speaker 3: record Men's Needs, Women's Needs whatever in Vancouver, and one
Speaker 3: of the first things they said, if I remember, I
Speaker 3: think it was probably Ryan kind of came up to
Speaker 3: me so just as the session started, and so I said,
Speaker 3: slightly sheepish boys like oh so yeah, yeah, yeah, was
Speaker 3: it Ryan. It's I kind of like, is this something
Speaker 3: you could sort us out with? And I think, oh God,
Speaker 3: here we go, right, okay. I was thinking, I'll just
Speaker 3: speak to some of the speak to one of the engineers,
Speaker 3: see see what's going on in the local scene, like
Speaker 3: see what they need. And it's like, I said, all right, right,
Speaker 3: what were you after? And it's like, well, do you
Speaker 3: think you could see if we could get like a
Speaker 3: cute dog to come down at the studio. I was like, ah, literally,
Speaker 3: wasn't egging that? Yeah yeah, And I was like, all right, okay,
Speaker 3: let me let me ask around, see what the local
Speaker 3: scene is, see what I can saw you out with.
Speaker 3: And sure enough, like when the engineers had a a
Speaker 3: rather elderly labrador that came down hung out in the
Speaker 3: in the studio and dogs are cool because they any
Speaker 3: tension and any atmosphere is diluted when a dog's there,
Speaker 3: because you know, you go over and you pat the dog.
Speaker 3: It's also like, you know how parents behave in a
Speaker 3: certain way in front of a kid, or you know,
Speaker 3: when couples don't argue in front of strangers. I think
Speaker 3: people are like that in front of a dog as well.
Speaker 3: You don't want to be a prick in front of
Speaker 3: a dog, you know, like like I don't want Alvy
Speaker 3: to see me being a dick to Bob, you know,
Speaker 3: like he's not gonna think that's cool, you know, not
Speaker 3: that would be addicted Bob anyway. Bob's lovely. Also, the
Speaker 3: other thing is on a practical level, dogs they need
Speaker 3: to exercise and you know, they need to do follow
Speaker 3: the calls of nature, and they need to go outside.
Speaker 3: And when you're in the studio, it's it's really easy
Speaker 3: to get caught up in whatever it is you're doing,
Speaker 3: completely obsessed with. I'm a really obsessive type who will
Speaker 3: totally lose track of the outside world if there's an
Speaker 3: idea to follow, which can be really unhealthy. You know,
Speaker 3: you need to get perspective, you need to step away
Speaker 3: from things, and sometimes I like the discipline to do
Speaker 3: it myself. But if aalve is there, he wants to
Speaker 3: go out and he wants to have a walk, And
Speaker 3: so you go out and you exercise and you appreciate
Speaker 3: the Southwest of Scotland climate which is always refreshing.
Speaker 2: It's fact the equivalent of a it's like a pet
Speaker 2: angled screen break where you sort of you know that
Speaker 2: every four hours you need to go and get some
Speaker 2: fresh air. And probably in that moment when you're taking
Speaker 2: a dug out for a walk, you like that's it.
Speaker 3: That drum sounds totally different. It totally is, you know,
Speaker 3: like you do get those things. Like another thing for
Speaker 3: me as well is well where we are it's a
Speaker 3: bit chilly. It's a chili part of Scotland and it's
Speaker 3: it's not the studio isn't kind of the most modern
Speaker 3: twenty first century building and we've still got a wood
Speaker 3: fire that keeps us warm in this place. So a
Speaker 3: lot of the time spent chopping up wood as well.
Speaker 3: And chopping woods another really good one for doing what
Speaker 3: you see. You know, when when when your your your
Speaker 3: brain is clogged up with a problem or sorts. Yeah,
Speaker 3: chopping a bit of wood, like it's usually when it
Speaker 3: gets sorted out that in a good shower.
Speaker 2: I think we've landed on some like essentials like this
Speaker 2: is this is the experience that comes from making a
Speaker 2: few records, because like you know, when a band comes
Speaker 2: to make the first album, they wouldn't know this stuff
Speaker 2: years on.
Speaker 3: You know you need a dog getting melvy. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 3: some physical activity.
Speaker 2: I tell you what you could you could yeah, not
Speaker 2: that I'm sure Bob wants to lend him out, but
Speaker 2: it sounds like, you know, he could be useful to
Speaker 2: some other.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, it's true. It was actually Toyo hands On,
Speaker 3: our first producer, told us about that, the physical activity thing,
Speaker 3: because when we were recording our first single in London
Speaker 3: years ago, two thousand and three, he said we were
Speaker 3: recording and said, right, we've got to go outside and
Speaker 3: we've got to play some football.
Speaker 4: And I was like, football, are you kid? I fucking
Speaker 4: hate football. I don't don't play football. Like I'm not
Speaker 4: one of those football guys. I know I've got two
Speaker 4: left feet. I can I can play guitar, I can
Speaker 4: sing bag and barely, but I can't I cannot kick
Speaker 4: a football. It's just not And then he said it
Speaker 4: doesn't matter. The whole point of it is not to
Speaker 4: play football, but it's to get your circulation going, get
Speaker 4: you moving, and get you doing something different from what
Speaker 4: you're doing. And it's a it is a really valuable
Speaker 4: volleyable lesson.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So that album that you've made, this new album that
Speaker 2: you've made then, with the assistance of Bob's dog always
Speaker 2: is sending you.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, I hope he's got a credit on
Speaker 3: the album, like he really needs it. You need to
Speaker 3: make sure he's picture a big picture of al. He's
Speaker 3: the cutest band member by far. Like what kind of dog.
Speaker 3: He's what they call a cocka poo, So it's like
Speaker 3: the internet's favorite dog. Oh is that right? I think
Speaker 3: he's the pretty enet. Yeah, good looking. But they're good
Speaker 3: for me because I another reason why I'm not a
Speaker 3: great football why my football career was cut short. I'm
Speaker 3: an asthmatic and I've always had pretty bad asthma and
Speaker 3: dogs can sometimes set me off quite badly, but not
Speaker 3: Aldi because the hypoallergenic dogs, Like God, it sounds like
Speaker 3: such a burgoo dog. No, he doesn't have for he
Speaker 3: has hair, which is really cool for me because I
Speaker 3: can like get up close to him without my eyes
Speaker 3: swelling up and me needing to reach for my inhaler.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you've talked previously about the idea of characters, writing
Speaker 2: in a slightly different way, maybe taking lyrically, writing from
Speaker 2: a different perspective, or working like stories characters into into
Speaker 2: into your song for the first time, tell me a
Speaker 2: little bit more about that and the types of characters
Speaker 2: that you kind of wanted to paint, if that makes sense.
Speaker 3: So songs the way I've written songs before, and some
Speaker 3: of the songs on this album have have been like,
Speaker 3: you know, this self confessional song, like where you're talking
Speaker 3: about a lived experience that you've had. So I'd say
Speaker 3: a song like walk Away on our second record is
Speaker 3: like that, or Fade Together or on this record lazy Boy.
Speaker 3: There's a song called lazy Boy where the message is
Speaker 3: probably most straightforward on the record, where I was lying
Speaker 3: in my girlfriend's bed thinking I am a lazy boy,
Speaker 3: and it was purely celebrating laziness and refusing to feel
Speaker 3: guilt for it. But so, yeah, you can write from
Speaker 3: that perspective or I've written songs before, which are kind
Speaker 3: of like observed character type songs which I don't know,
Speaker 3: like a song like Jacqueline or Michael, but again about
Speaker 3: characters that I know and could see. I'd never really
Speaker 3: written truly fictional characters before. And that kind of came
Speaker 3: about as a reaction to a record I was really
Speaker 3: obsessed with being of. I suppose the process that ended
Speaker 3: up with this record. And when we finished touring FFS,
Speaker 3: I went back to that first John Lennon record, the
Speaker 3: first Plastic Ono band record, which I always liked, but
Speaker 3: I got completely obsessed with it. You know when you
Speaker 3: get so obsessed with a record that you're just just
Speaker 3: playing it again and again and again. And I was
Speaker 3: sitting in the room with my record player in Scotland.
Speaker 3: It was just me in the place on my own.
Speaker 3: It was me and my thoughts, and I'll just flip
Speaker 3: it over from one side to the other to the other.
Speaker 3: I'd make more tea, listen to more. I'd have a whiskey,
Speaker 3: listen to more, write something down. But I'd be listening
Speaker 3: to this record all the time. And I think it's
Speaker 3: pretty obvious why I was drawn to it, Because he
Speaker 3: was it appealed because he was in the same sort
Speaker 3: of place then that I was in. He'd been in
Speaker 3: a band for ten years, it had finished, that decade
Speaker 3: had finished, and he was doing that introspective thing who
Speaker 3: he was, what the future was going to be, looking
Speaker 3: back on the past, and you know, and so of
Speaker 3: rejecting the past to a degree so that he could
Speaker 3: move forward into the future. And yeah, there's a lot
Speaker 3: I could could could relate to. But what I love
Speaker 3: about that record, and I still find so powerful about
Speaker 3: that record, is the rawness and the emotional honesty that's
Speaker 3: sometimes so so brutal, it's almost difficult to digest on
Speaker 3: that record, and I found it so moving and it
Speaker 3: got me thinking that so like ever since that record,
Speaker 3: there's been this presumption amongst songwriters and singers, but also
Speaker 3: amongst fans and critics that if you are going to
Speaker 3: achieve emotional honesty in this this form, like singing and songwriting,
Speaker 3: it has to come from the confessional. It has to
Speaker 3: come from the confessional and personal experience. And the more
Speaker 3: I thought about this as I was listening to this record,
Speaker 3: the more I thought that, well, yes, it's it's true
Speaker 3: in this case. It's true in this instance but it's
Speaker 3: not universally true, because if it was universally true, you'd
Speaker 3: have to apply it to other art forms as well.
Speaker 3: You'd have to apply it to literature, you'd have to
Speaker 3: apply it to film, and you know, like like, well,
Speaker 3: it's it's not true. Otherwise some of the great moments
Speaker 3: in cinema, like I have no emotional impact. You know,
Speaker 3: if I look at the shower scene in Cycle like that,
Speaker 3: there's no lived experience of murder, so like it's but
Speaker 3: it's still emotionally powerful.
Speaker 2: As I've already mentioned, like this is going to be
Speaker 2: our last episode of Midnight Chats for the year, for
Speaker 2: twenty seventeen. But just a few things about twenty seventeen.
Speaker 2: As you as you walked in as we came in
Speaker 2: to record this, you spotted a copy of Lizzie Goodman's
Speaker 2: book Oh Yeah, which is probably I mean, I'm not
Speaker 2: I'm only a third in, but it's kind of like
Speaker 2: it's already this year, and it's for people that don't
Speaker 2: know it. It's She's done a set of into these
Speaker 2: series of interviews and including yourself where and put together
Speaker 2: a history of the New York rock and roll scene
Speaker 2: from two thousand and one to twenty eleven the emergency
Speaker 2: bands like The Strokes and The Rapture and LCD sound
Speaker 2: System and the Aas and previously to that, Jonathan fire
Speaker 2: Eater in those bands that were kicked it all off.
Speaker 3: But have you read it? I have read it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: of it. I loved it. It's it's a real really
Speaker 3: great gossipy page turner. It's it's bizarre reading. It was
Speaker 3: bizarre thor because I've always loved books like that. Remind
Speaker 3: me of the Legs McNeil book a little bit, you know,
Speaker 3: like because it's it's a it's a verbal history, you know,
Speaker 3: like it's people in their own words rather than taking
Speaker 3: the prose of the writer itself. But it's the first
Speaker 3: time I've read a book where I actually know quite
Speaker 3: a few of the characters involved, which which is quite unsettling.
Speaker 3: It's like oh right, yeah, yeah, yeah, oh god, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's it's and I'm in it myself as well, which
Speaker 3: even though I wasn't there at the beginning of the
Speaker 3: New York thing. But yeah, honorary member, it sounds.
Speaker 2: Like the New York that you came to know. Does
Speaker 2: it paint a realistic picture, because, like I say, it
Speaker 2: starts two thousand and one, that it's a story of
Speaker 2: a decade, really like people come and they go, And
Speaker 2: did some of it feel like a kind of accurate
Speaker 2: depiction of what you got to see in New York?
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, yeah, it felt it's unsettlingly candid at times.
Speaker 3: But what I particularly enjoyed about the book was how
Speaker 3: it captured the transformation of a city over a decade.
Speaker 3: And while I wasn't in New York in two thousand
Speaker 3: and one, the first time, it was in two thousand
Speaker 3: and three, and yeah, over the next few years, certainly
Speaker 3: the next decade, it really did trans particularly Brooklyn, which
Speaker 3: is where I was hanging out mostly, you know, it
Speaker 3: changed to become almost unrecognizable from how it started off.
Speaker 3: And also seeing the evolution of the music there and
Speaker 3: how it's oddly periods and time for various societal, geographic reasons,
Speaker 3: for political reasons, economic reasons. Sometimes it just comes together
Speaker 3: and it's ripe, it's fertile for it for a scene
Speaker 3: to emerge. And New York really really was, specifically Lower
Speaker 3: East Side and Brooklyn were very ripe at that time
Speaker 3: in a way that I kind of don't think it
Speaker 3: is anymore. I still love New York. It's it's possibly
Speaker 3: my favorite city in the world, But like London, it's
Speaker 3: fucking expensive living now, and it has this financial repulsion
Speaker 3: to it. It's literally repelling people away from it, and
Speaker 3: people can't afford to live there. And when you read
Speaker 3: that book, there is a real background of freedom and
Speaker 3: access to places spaces that you can occupy and do
Speaker 3: what you want to do and pursue your your your creativity,
Speaker 3: which has existed in London in the past as well,
Speaker 3: but it seems kind of redundant now, which which I
Speaker 3: find quite tragic.
Speaker 2: Did it make you think you'd like to read an
Speaker 2: equivalent a book done in a similar style for Glasgow
Speaker 2: at a certain point in Manchester or London.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I might write the Classgow One. Yeah, the the Yeah,
Speaker 3: there are some good stories in Glasgow. Definitely. What period
Speaker 3: would you hone in on to do the Glasgow One?
Speaker 3: What I always wanted to and I guess like Noil
Speaker 3: McCann's film did it to a degree. It concentrated on
Speaker 3: chemical but like it touched on the sort of like
Speaker 3: the unseen part of Glasgow because there's in about ninety
Speaker 3: one I started doing a club called the Kazook Club
Speaker 3: in the thirteenth note, and I used to put on
Speaker 3: bands and lots of bands that went on to become renowned,
Speaker 3: like like Maguai had their first gig there, Stuart Murdoch
Speaker 3: played down there before Bouncedebastian playing all sorts. So and
Speaker 3: there were always bands like Urosayatsura and byss that that
Speaker 3: sort of and the Yummi Fair and Long leg Al
Speaker 3: and saw these great bands appearing from there, but also
Speaker 3: some of the bands who were kind of the stars
Speaker 3: of that scene of the if you could put it
Speaker 3: that way at the time. So some of them didn't
Speaker 3: really get beyond the walls of that club to a degree,
Speaker 3: or certainly didn't get beyond Glasgow, and for one reason
Speaker 3: or another just imploded. And I think every scene's got that,
Speaker 3: and it comes up in Lizzie's book a bit as well,
Speaker 3: like every scene has the the figures that you always
Speaker 3: knew were going to do something great, and then you
Speaker 3: have those that you always presume are going to do
Speaker 3: something incredible, but some for some reason or another, often
Speaker 3: it's narcotic related, they fuck it all up really drastically,
Speaker 3: and they're the people that really fascinate me. But they're
Speaker 3: the kind of if I was going to write a book,
Speaker 3: that's that's who I'd want to write about, because I
Speaker 3: want to say, you know about those guys. Listen to
Speaker 3: trout Right shine a light on some of the yeah
Speaker 3: the lesser told you. Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Speaker 2: You've talked about it a bit, the idea of heading
Speaker 2: into a new decade of Frans Ferdinand. How are you
Speaker 2: feeling generally, like good energy, feeling really positive, feeling really
Speaker 2: kind of like refreshed by the experience we've reached the
Speaker 2: end of twenty seventeen, twenty eighteens about me just around
Speaker 2: the corner, How are you feeling about it?
Speaker 3: I feel really really good right now, very excited about
Speaker 3: the future, and I think there is there's something you know,
Speaker 3: when Nick left the band, it forces you to consider
Speaker 3: where you are and what it is you're doing, because
Speaker 3: at that point you have to ask yourself some fundamental questions.
Speaker 3: You ask yourself, A am I going to continue doing this?
Speaker 3: And so speaking to Bob and Paul is like, yeah, okay,
Speaker 3: we're going to do this. And then there's there's another
Speaker 3: fundamental decision that you have to make after that you
Speaker 3: have to say it right Okay, if we're going to continue,
Speaker 3: are we going to like look back at we made
Speaker 3: a decade's worth of music albums? Right? Do we look
Speaker 3: back on that decade and live in that decade? And
Speaker 3: I'm not gonna mention names, but there's plenty of bands
Speaker 3: that I know that do tour, tend to do the
Speaker 3: festival circuit, and they live in the decade that's formed
Speaker 3: their band, and it's as if creatively they never left
Speaker 3: a decade. Okay, they might release the odd song occasionally,
Speaker 3: but they're essentially living in their black catalog. Totally fine,
Speaker 3: you know, like they're great musicians, made a great a
Speaker 3: great mark, or you decide the last thing you made
Speaker 3: in that decade was the end point, that was the
Speaker 3: punctuation mark. It's now time to start the new decade.
Speaker 3: And it's remarkably refreshing. That's the word I'm looking for. Energizing. No,
Speaker 3: it's unburdening. I don't know if that's the right word.
Speaker 3: Is what's in my head. It's it's like it's like
Speaker 3: you've you've finished a job. Like it's like you're a
Speaker 3: delivery driver. You've finished a job and you're like you
Speaker 3: you're on your bike like, you know, one of those
Speaker 3: guys on the bikes around Delver. Yeah, Like I'm like
Speaker 3: a delivery drive, you know, that big black thing that
Speaker 3: they have, the big box. Like, I've finished that. I'm
Speaker 3: taking the thing off and it's there, it's all done.
Speaker 3: I don't have to pick it up again. That decade
Speaker 3: is over. I don't have to pick it up ever
Speaker 3: ever again. You know, I still enjoy playing the songs
Speaker 3: from that time, great, you know like that, but I
Speaker 3: don't feel I live in that decade anymore. I've left
Speaker 3: that decade behind, and I'm a very unnostalgic person, and
Speaker 3: so I find that the most refreshing thing of all
Speaker 3: being able to leave the leave the past alone. So
Speaker 3: I feel good.
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