"Here we are at the iPod party / I love your friends they're all so arty", leers Alex Kapranos.
One suspects there are few occasions in the history of rock and roll when such a phrase been laced with quite so much loathing for both self and audience. Because in a collective such as Franz Ferdinand where image is everything, appearances are beginning to slip. Not usually a band desperate to sell themselves, when lead single 'Ulysses' off disappointing 3rd album Tonight failed to sear itself into the public consciousness all hands were called to the promotional pump. There were appearances on Ant and Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway and Top Of The Pops, an iPod Touch advert and tonight's event, the last bastion of the sales whore - a corporate gig.
It is possible however, that all Glaswegian woes dispersed from the Roundhouse for the brief forty minute stint in which Passion Pit occupied the stage. Such is the euphoric nature of Michael Angelakos and his merry band of Massachusetts electro-pop troopers that facing their music with anything other than a gurn of careless enjoyment is almost impossible. Taking a while to warm a rather stale crowd to boiling point, a closing one two volley of Sleepyhead and The Reeling ensures the band left their audience with a twitching in their hips ready to be shaken by a post punk swirl of angular guitars and pin sharp bass lines.
On this account then, Franz come good. Given their tendency to 'experiment' on record and produce almost exactly the same sound as their last album, the composition of tonight's set list posits itself firmly within safe territory for the four-piece. Undeniably within their own arthouse mesh the band find themselves on terrific form. Kapranos writhes around on stage in his 'skinny yet seductive' rent boy persona whilst Nick McCarthy dispatches 'Dark Of The Matinee', 'No You Girls' and 'Bite Hard' with the ease and aplomb of a man who's been relentlessly touring his record since January.
After the customary address of 'Take Me Out' however, a change of gears is attempted and ambitions of the band swell over and beyond the weight of the songs on offer. 'Lucid Dreams' may have marked the most eclectic moment on Tonight but live it comes across as three minutes of standard Franz with a bizarrely static krautrock segueway added on. The finale of 'Walk Away' and 'Ulysses' further undermines Kapranos' inability thus far to write a song with either significant emotional weight or significant deviances from past successes.
Make no mistake, when Franz do what they do best, they're practically peerless. It's when they try to sail a different course, that the good ship runs aground all too easily. It's a Catch 22 situation boys and no amount of shameless promotion will put this question to bed.
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