Big name collaborations are a dime a dozen these days, but seeing it happen on a dedicated, successful and truly realized scale is rare. FFS (yes, they are aware of the other meaning of the acronym), which features all of the members of mid-2000s indie darlings Franz Ferdinand and 70s synthpop brothers Sparks, have made it clear that that’s what they’re going for. Envisioned not a supergroup but as a merging of bands, the six-piece surprised fans which the announcement of their debut, self-titled album earlier this year.
While the multi-generational gap between each act’s heyday could make the pairing seem unlikely, the bands complement each other very nicely. The quirky keyboard work that defined Sparks’ sound slots in well with the more traditional guitar, bass and drums of Franz Ferdinand, while Russell Mael’s pipey fasetto bounces off of Alex Kapranos’ baritone. The songs they’ve put out together have a timeless feel, with the band(s) rollicking through lush and driving pop riffs while never taking themselves too seriously. (ie. one of the standout tracks is titled “Collaborations Don’t Work”)
After a well-received run of European shows, FFS is hitting the United States for a fall tour, including a stop at the Orpheum Theatre tomorrow night. We chatted with Franz Ferdinand drummer Paul Thomson about working with your idols, making mixtapes and the lasting legacy of “Take Me Out”.
Allston Pudding: I know Sparks has been credited as an influence to Franz Ferdinand. Were they someone you in particular listened to growing up?
Paul Thomson: Yeah. I was aware of them from when I was a kid, even. My dad had a record collection and I can remember picking out a couple of their albums which had really striking record sleeves that stood out from the rest- Kimono My House and Propoganda. When I listened to them they sounded different from anything I’d heard before and I was fascinated by them. This was when I was six years old or something like that. I was curious as to where it came from to get that totally unique sound and outlook.
I’ve just fallen for them ever since then. When we first got the band (Franz Ferdinand) together there was a bunch of groups that we all liked. Usually when you start a band you do a couple of covers as well, and we covered “Achoo” off of Propoganda, but we weren’t very good musicians at the time so we didn’t do a very good job of it! We kind of abandoned it.
AP: Listening to the album, I was really struck by how natural the collaboration sounded, almost like you’d been playing together your whole career. Is that harmony something that built over the years you’ve been friends, or did Sparks and Franz Ferdinand just click musically?
PT: Well we started collaborating together throughout the last ten years. Instead of using proper record producers, we’ve used people that were still in bands, like Joe and Alexis from Hot Chip, so we’re kind of used to collaborating with other musicians. This one was special in that we seemed to click immediately.
But the album was done very different from most projects. It wasn’t like we sat in the room together and wrote together. I don’t think we would have been able to do it that way; I think the eye contact would have psyched us all out! (laughs) It was all done via email over the course of a couple of years. Well, maybe 18 months all-in, but not intensive. We were busy touring at that point and Ron (Mael) and Russell (Mael) had other projects as well. This was sort of a fun excursion.
We didn’t really tell anybody about it either, because there wasn’t really much to tell. Whenever we had a spare moment in the studio we would say “oh, should we work on one of those songs that Ron and Russell sent over?” We’d work on it a little, email it back to them, then they’d return it the next day with a full set of lyrics or a string arrangement. We’d never really worked like that before with anybody.
When we finally got together in the studio, it was the first time we’d ever played together as a group and it seemed to click immediately. All of us were pretty excited and surprised!
AP: On a similar note, given that you’re both veteran bands who presumably had long-standing approaches toward the nitty gritty of performing, practicing and writing, was there a teething process working together at first?
PT: No. I think a lot of what makes a band work is if you can get along with the other members! Over the course of the ten year career we’ve had, it’s had its ups and downs but fortunately we’re totally on the level with Sparks in terms of humor and stuff that we’re into. We’re sort of free and open to talking about the things we like; trashy popular culture or art and music.
Obvious we’re fans of Ron and Russell as well. They’ve got a lot of stories to tell and we want to learn from them. Learn how you sustain a career like that well into your 60s and still have, like they do, more enthusiasm for what they do at their age than many groups in their 20s have.
AP: With two pretty sizable catalogues of music, plus the new album, what does the setlist look like at an FFS show?
PT: Well, we’ve been doing a lot of festivals this summer and the festival slot allows us to play for about an hour, but with the US tour coming up, we’ll be playing a full set; about 90 minutes. So usually we play the entire FFS album and then we play- well, the way we see it is that we play covers of Franz Ferdinand and Sparks songs, usually a couple each. Then we kind of work the setlist so it can balance. I don’t want to give too much away, but it’s a fun show!
AP: You’ve been touring FFS for a few months now. Would you say the crowd reaction to the sets has been noticeably from a Franz Ferdinand show?
PT: Yeah. Certainly compared with our own shows, club shows or theatre shows, because people have come out to see FFS, so it’ll be divided between Franz Ferdinand fans and Sparks fans.
We had very low expectations with this record. We were kind of just doing it for the hell of it really, since it was something that we wanted to do. We weren’t going to turn down the oppurtunity to work with Sparks.
So we’re pretty stoked with the reaction that we got to the record. People seem to really like the FFS material. Also they view it as it’s own group, which is sort of what it became. When we were recording it we didn’t realize that FFS was going to be it’s own group. When we started off, we were two sort of distinct camps and then it sort of became this group, which was a beautiful thing. I think because it excited us, it came across in the music and excited fans of both Sparks and Franz Ferdinand.
AP: Is there any other band you’d have considered attempting a project like this with?
PT: No, because just the setup of Sparks lends itself to a collaboration with us. When you consider that we have a rhythm section and four individuals while Sparks is a vocalist and a keyboard player, the two just fit. It might have been a different story if Sparks had an established lineup; a bass player and a drummer. That would have been slightly more difficult. I can’t really think of any other groups that are immediately out of the box ready to slot in and create a collaborative lineup.
AP: Is FFS a project you see going past this album and tour?
PT: We don’t really know yet, we haven’t really discussed it! The, I guess, stock answer that I’m giving you to the question is that we didn’t expect to be touring the record, let alone recording. But even now we’re near the end of touring the record, none of us really know what’s going to happen next. I quite like that though, and I think we all do! Not knowing what you’ll be doing a year from now is an interesting feeling, and we all kind of embrace that.
But possibly. There was certainly a lot of material that we wrote that we didn’t record that would be nice to get out to a wider audience.
AP: Off the subject of FFS, I really enjoyed your Late Night Tales album last year. Beyond recording the new tracks, what goes into choosing songs for something that’s basically a commercial mixtape?
PT: Well, we’d been asked to do that years ago, actually. We’d been asked to do various things but when you’re on tour, offers like that get pushed back in terms of priority. We did get around to sitting down and working it out though.
When we first started the group there was one mixtape that we used to play in our car that totally informed what the band has become. That’s kind of how we wanted to approach the Late Night Tales thing: more like a mixtape than an actual DJ mix. We weren’t interested in showing off our limited mixing skills! (laughs)
We went fairly broad in terms of genre or chronology. Some up-to-date stuff and some pretty old stuff as well. We wanted it to feel like we got somebody around and they just started playing the record.
AP: Franz Ferdinand is a band with a lot of hit songs, but “Take Me Out” is certainly your most recognizable track, especially here in America. With four great albums of material, has it ever been bothersome being recognized for a track you put out a decade ago?
PT: Yeah, I mean it’s kind of a double-edged thing really. We certainly capitalized off of the success of that one song. We’ve become this group that has been doing festivals every summer for ten years, and obviously we play that song because people expect to hear it. We’d still like to think that we’ve got more in us than just that one track, though! I think, though, that the industry has changed and the landscape of pop music has changed drastically since that song came out. It would be difficult for us to, sort of, penetrate that now.
When we wrote that song, none of us had any money. Alex was the only one of us with a job. I’d been playing in bands for ten years and I wasn’t really expecting anything to happen. But we wrote that song and just immediately thought, “well, I could imagine that on the radio!” I can distinctly remember saying that at the first rehearsal after we wrote the song. But none of us imagined that it would ever get played on the radio. Then 2004 was obviously a completely insane year and it didn’t feel real that everything was happening. It was such a broad selection for people who identified with that song. It had a good hook and it’s recognizable.
I’ll say, though, we do still enjoy playing it in front of festival crowds. When you have 20,000 people jumping up and down to it, you’d have to be sort of dead not to be moved by that!
AP: You said you’re not really sure what Franz Ferdinand’s going to be doing a year from now, but besides FFS do you have anything else on your plates?
PT: We’ve always got ideas, but it’s very difficult to write and work on things, logistically, when we’re touring. We can approach those ideas when we come off the road. So yeah, we’ll be back working on things, but I don’t really have a timeframe or anything like that. We’ll start working on a new record and if the stuff that we’re working on is shit, then we’ll just stop!
FFS will be playing the Orpheum Theatre tomorrow night, 10/2, with openers Intelligence. Tickets are still available here.