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Concert
Review by Nick Morgan |
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FRANZ FERDINAND
HMV Hammersmith Apollo
London, March 9th 2009
In
a word, Serge, disappointed. Very disappointed
indeed. Don’t get me wrong. You couldn’t
fault the effort of a band who pounded away relentlessly
for an hour, and then returned for another twenty
minutes’ encore. And those who thought it
a short set obviously can’t imagine just
how knackered these four now-not-so-young men
must have been when they finished. |
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| Maybe
I should have seen them sooner – about five
years ago to be precise. But I’d expected
so much more than art-school-smart image projection
and a wall of remorseless mono-rhythm sound, so
loud that it left me with a throbbing head for almost
twenty-four hours. I had thought that Franz
Ferdinand were supposed to be clever,
the saviours of post-punk British guitar music,
tightly constructed, fashionably discordant, with
wry and knowing lyrics beyond their years. Well
maybe they are – but any subtlety was washed
away in a tide of sub-disco rock and roll, with
every song starting to sound dangerously like the
one before and the one after, and that famous riff
from ‘Take me out’, the chart success
that broke the band, seemingly cropping up in every
song. |
| And
lest anyone get the wrong opinion, I was in a very
small minority, because the packed HMV Hammersmith
Apollo (yes – HMV have decided to invest in
the venue game, a sure sign that live music must
be on its way out) loved every minute of it, the
crowd close to the stage screaming like it was 1966,
and everyone baying for more when the set reached
its slightly premature end. |
| Upstairs
they had deserted their seats in favour of standing
by the third song, ‘Do you want to’,
and the majority of the audience, including the
late Giant
Haystacks who was helpfully sitting in front
of me, stayed on their feet for the whole night.
Clearly unable to dance in such confined space instead
they jerked and twitched like Shakers at a meeting,
or was it, I wondered, the onset of a collective
bout of irritable bowel syndrome? Talking of irritable
reminds me of the Photographer, who sat firmly in
her seat all night, looking like she was sucking
a soor plum, occasionally rolling her eyes heavenwards,
and mouthing unrepeatable obscenities at various
members of the entranced audience. No chance of
any pictures here, even if she’d been inclined
to try. As you might have guessed, she didn’t
like it much either. |
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| The
faux Glaswegian four have a new album out: a bold
departure into keyboard-driven disco said some of
the reviews; simply poor, said others. It’s
certainly hard to pick the albums from the songs
– indeed although the set list of around 16
songs is only slightly tilted towards the new work,
you might have thought that heard live, they all
came from the same disc. But new or old, the crowd
know their stuff, when to sing and when to chant.
Front man Alex Kapranos manages to whip them up
into a frenzy with ease. As you may know, he’s
something of a gourmet (he’s been a chef),
having written extensively about the culinary adventures
of rock and roll tours, so I had half expected to
see him in Hammersmith’s
finest where we ate our dinner. Then I remembered
that it now takes his people over two hours to fit
him into his famously skinny-fit jeans before he
goes on stage – so no pre-gig feast for him.
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So
that’s it really. The lesson of the evening,
if there is one, is that you shouldn’t wait
until bands are releasing their third album before
you go and see them. It’s often too late.
But of course, you can make your own mind up –
as I write they’re starting a tour of continental
Europe after which they head for the States, so
go and have a look. - Nick Morgan
Listen:
Franz
Ferdinand's MySpace page |
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the index of all reviews:
Nick's Concert Reviews
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There's nothing more down there... |
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