Franz Ferdinand
The Forum, Melbourne
Wednesday March 3, 2010

On record, Franz Ferdinand have always been a band to admire rather than embrace – clever, certainly, but somehow distant. Not the sort of band you’d plaster posters of all over your wall. Even the adjectives (over-)used to describe their songs – “angular”, “jagged”, etc – seemed kinda inhospitable, the sort of words you’d use to describe abstract art rather than music. Even their new dancefloor-friendly direction hasn’t entirely changed this; reviewing Tonight: Franz Ferdinand in The Guardian, Alexis Petridis suggested that “[the band] will keep trying to move your hips because they know they'll never win your heart”.

But live they’re a different proposition, and tonight, they win both hearts and hips. You can certainly see why they’re the latest “crossover” band to grace the bill of Future Entertainment’s flagship festival (the reason they’re playing the Forum tonight) – they’re suitably guitar-based to keep the indie kids content, and danceable enough to keep the dancefloor moving. But more surprisingly, perhaps, they’re also really engaging live performers – self-deprecating, funny and full of puppyish energy.

They start, predictably enough, with a run-through latest single ‘No You Girls’, after which singer Alex Kapranos indulges in a bit of city-specific crowd banter (“Melbourne, it’s been too long!”), thankfully sparing us the “you’re a better crowd than Sydney” bit. So far, so lukewarm. From there, though, their performance starts to gather momentum, and never really looks back.

Tonight’s set is heavy on material from the band’s first, self-titled album – perhaps surprisingly so, but given it’s their strongest record, we're not complaining. It’s interesting to note crowd reactions – the people going batshit for ‘Tell Her Tonight’ and a fantastic version of ‘The Dark of the Matinée’ are kinda quiet for the new material, and vice versa.

The latter’, with its prescient meditations on the effects of success, makes a nice lead into dancefloor-slaying hipster satire ‘Do You Want To’. By now the band are working into stonking form, and guitarist Nick McCarthy celebrates by throwing himself into the crowd, while Kapranos needs to take a puff on his Ventolin inhaler before they start ‘Take Me Out’. A friend tells the story of an early industry showcase in London, where the entire room stopped and gaped when the band started this song’s iconic breakdown, and it’s still as arresting exercise in dynamics as anyone’s produced since the Pixies came up with the idea of quiet/REALLY FUCKING LOUD/quiet again.

‘Ulysses’ and ‘Turn It On’ follow before an extended version of ‘40’’ and ‘Michael’, which leads into ‘Outsiders’ and a raucous four-way drum solo – drummer Paul Thomson carts his kit to the front of the stage and the other three members grab drumsticks, proceeding to batter the shit out of it. This’d be a fitting conclusion in and of itself, but Franz Ferdinand surprise again by eschewing the customary, cursory two-song encore for another half-hour of sustained excellence.

Kapranos returns first to perform a solo version of ‘Walk Away’ before the band join him for their cover of LCD’s Soundsystem’s ‘All My Friends’, which is singularly awesome but disappointingly met with bewilderment by a large majority of the crowd. Happily, a rollicking rendition of ‘This Fire’ is better received. Kapranos puts the punk back into post punk when he spots a crowd surfer – the singer grins happily at said surfer and then, much to the despair of attending security guards, falls gracefully into the crowd next to him, guitar and all. ‘Lucid Dreams’ follows, melting into a freeform electronic breakdown that’s left playing over the PA as the band leave the stage. They return, theatre-style, to take a bow, before dishing out high fives and signed setlists to the punters at the front of the stage. It’s a lovely gesture – why don’t more bands do this? – and a fine conclusion to a fantastic show.

Tom Hawking