![]() "For us this was a really challenging new idea," Russell added. "It's always good to feel slightly uncomfortable, slightly pushed." "It's always inspiring to take yourself out of the mode of operating in which you're comfortable," Kapranos said. ![]() "You're giving up a little of your soul, in hopes of finding a new soul somewhere. "The idea was to see how we could make it work as a new entity rather than just making it two separate bands playing together," said Russell Mael. "Tell me, are persistence and stupidity the same / Tell me, is resistance so enticing, please explain," Russell Mael and Kapranos sing in tandem, part of their strategy for integrating their forces. "Nobody had the courage to say, 'Could this be an album? Could it be something more serious?' So we traded a bunch of things and all of a sudden there were 18 songs and it was like, 'This should be an album, don't you think?'"Īmong those songs (16 of which are available on the album's deluxe edition) are thematically offbeat numbers such as "Dictator's Son," sung from the perspective of the have-it-all progeny of an unnamed foreign despot "Police Encounters," about a hapless guy who runs into dicey situations on a visit to Harlem and the album's first single and video, "Johnny Delusional," a throbbing minor-key plea from a romance-challenged man who recognizes the target of his love is far beyond his station. "We were just doing music," Ron Mael said. Rather than being put off, Kapranos said he and his bandmates welcomed the challenge, and they sent back a response in which Kapranos sings "I ain't no collaborator, I am the partisan rebel in the rocks." ![]() This time the Maels sent an early version of "Collaborations Don't Work" almost as a taunt. They renewed the conversation about collaborating but with no grand vision in place. Flash-forward to 2013, when both bands were booked to perform at the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival in Indio, and while both bands were making related tour stops on the way, the Maels ran into Kapranos on the streets of San Francisco. The idea was tantalizing, but because Franz Ferdinand's career was kicking into high gear, nothing came of it at the time. The Maels didn't want to let it end there, so they wrote "Piss Off" and sent it to Kapranos, guitarist Nick McCarthy, bassist Bob Hardy and drummer Paul Thomson to see what, if any, response they would get. and exchanged pleasantries as well as a nebulous "We should work together sometime" sentiment upon parting. In 2004, when Franz Ferdinand was first getting attention from its hit single "Take Me Out," the Maels read that the band members cited Sparks as an influence. Three decades after Sparks was born, Franz Ferdinand came along with its breakthrough debut album, "Franz Ferdinand," and the successor, "You Could Have It So Much Better," which brought the band into the U.S. ![]() The group spent much of the '90s exploring facets of dance and pop music before largely abandoning the conventional rock format in the early 2000s with broadly ambitious sonic experimentation on the albums "Li'l Beethoven" and "Hello Young Lovers." In the '80s the band flirted with mainstream success with "Music That You Can Dance To" and "Cool Places," a hit single and video collaboration with Jane Wiedlin of the Go-Go's. ![]()
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