Franz Ferdinand: Always ascending and letting go

So the title song is about ascending and letting go. What about the rest of the album?
Alex Kapranos: More than anything, we wanted the album to be uplifting, and we wanted it to make you dance. But it is also an important record in our evolution as a band. The last album was the end of an era for us. This is a new beginning, with fresh minds and two new band members. Ascending is what you want to do as a band. Instead of looking back and complaining – what we did last year on (the anti-Trump single) “Demagogue”, which is not on the album – our perspective is now fixed on the future.

You ask listeners to come out of their “paper cages”. Is that something you struggle with too?
Kapranos: Of course. I am constantly building psychological barriers or paper cages around myself. I could break through them so easily, but often I just don’t. We build these cages to protect ourselves, to keep ourselves in and to keep others out. Most communication and most forms of politeness are paper cages. We use them to keep others at a distance. I want to remind listeners that you always have a choice to break out of them.

When you released your debut, you claimed to want to make music with the same dynamism as dance music. Was that much easier once you recruited a real dance producer?
Kapranos: Yes. It is true that it was always our intention to make dance music as a raw rock band. But I don’t think that Tore Johansson, who produced our debut, really knew what we meant by that. We had to convince him to bring a kick drum into the studio, because it was part of what we thought of as dance music. Tore seemed more in favour of a cleaner, thinner, rock sound. Philippe [Zdar, of the French house duo Cassius – TP], who has a background as a DJ and has worked with the Beastie Boys and Pharell Williams, did know what the kick drum was for. [Laughs]

Tore Johansson was apparently not crazy about “The Dark of the Matinée”, which is still one of your most infectious songs.
Kapranos: Yes, that’s true. I had forgotten about that. Let’s just say that things were much easier with Philippe in the studio. You know, there are two kinds of producers: the adversarial one and the avuncular one. They both make the same claims about how they are going to do an incredible job. But the first type sees you as the enemy. The prime example was Phil Spector. He would have held a gun to your head to get you to play the chords he wanted to hear. Tore is in the same category, but was perhaps a touch less extreme. The other type, which includes people like Philippe, wants to be your friend and become part of the band. Neither of them necessarily holds the truth, but working with the second type is a lot less stressful!

The result does not sound bombastic. It is almost as though you have consciously embraced banality.
Kapranos: That’s true. “Lazy Boy” does represent much more than the glorification of laziness. But ironically, from a musical point of view, it was the most difficult track to learn to play. The challenge was that it is written in 5/4 time. So not four but five to the floor. [Laughs] My favourite authors like Oscar Wilde or even Sartre always attempted to make complex matters comprehensible. Their prose is not impenetrable, but beautiful, precise, and understandable. Whenever artists have a banal idea, they often want to swathe it in a veil of impenetrability. Iggy Pop is one of my favourite musicians. He has never felt the need to let his intelligence get in the way of his basic performance. Philippe and I immediately agreed that the music on Always Ascending should be instinctive. It is not made to be analysed, but to be felt.