"I like art that comes with a freshness; with a perspective that you haven't seen before, but is comprehensible," Alex Kapranos tells Exclaim! from his Paris home. "And that's what pop music gives to me."
This much has been obvious since Franz Ferdinand's inception, but with each album cycle, their frontman seems to approach this ethos with new vigour. With their sixth album, The Human Fear, due out January 10, Kapranos is animated — more interested in a good chat than being a subject. He's just as eager to talk shop about the record as he is the guitars in the room behind me, his taste for Chappell Roan or pop's cyclical nature.
"I'm not chasing a trend here, but I'm a long-term artist, you know? I'm in this for the long run," he says. This affirmation is one he's told himself since the beginning, but gains new meaning now that "indie sleaze" is the nostalgia du jour.
Those conscious during the noughties remember it differently than the internet claims to, but beyond hoping it finally kills the term "post-punk revival" — a term Franz and their contemporaries were slapped with early on — Kapranos has an explanation for the aesthetic's resurgence: "I feel that the indie sleaze perspective is really the 2020s using the early 2000s as a mirror to understand what they are now," he offers. This reflects back to the anxieties of The Human Fear, encapsulating the dread that comes with life, death and leaving institutions.
Take for example "The Doctor," a track inspired by the bandleader's childhood asthmatic hospital stays. "I've become accustomed to this level of attention / I've got nurses I can talk to and thermometers to hold," he sings over subdued, angled guitars and bulging synths, the sense of familiarity keeping the drip connected. Like much of the new album, it oscillates between that raw, old Franz sound and the brand of camp they've indulged over the last decade.
It's a song that captures the 2020s version of nostalgia, which is ruled by the institution of online spaces. Where one side aims to replicate the grimy, horny euphoria emulated by point-and-shoots and skinny ties, another disavows it. It's cross-armed, oversaturated and overcomplicated, and doesn't "challenge" or "reward" the 52-year-old Kapranos as a listener. Instead, he blames it for the "widening gulf between pop music and — for want of a better word — alternative guitar music."
He shares, "I think there's been this horrible trend within social media in recent years, particularly on TikTok, of there being a respect for technical capacity in musicians, like these people who can show off their technical prowess without showing anything of their soul whatsoever, and I find that a truly depressing state of affairs."
Of course, he sees the irony in this illusion of complexity: "It's very easy to make impenetrable music that people can listen to and then prove to their pals how smart they are because they 'get it,' when actually there's fucking nothing to get in the first place."
Though Franz have always been a pop band, an aversion to the pretentious has only propelled those sensibilities further. This hasn't axed their technical aspirations, as they only accepted the best in assembling their new(ish) lineup. Julian Corrie and Dino Bardot came on board following Nick McCarthy's departure in 2016, and they — alongside founding bassist Bob Hardy — found themselves in search of a new drummer in 2021 when Paul Thomson departed.
"When we were looking for a new drummer, we had two criteria: that, one, that they had to be from Glasgow, and two, that they had to be the best drummer from Glasgow, and that's Audrey [Tait]," Kapranos says of their newest member. He gushes about how "bloody lucky" he is to play and tour with people who enjoy each other's company, which not only lends itself well to Franz's upcoming North American spring jaunt, but to this pop-driven playfulness.
This self-assuredness is what conquers The Human Fear. With his keen warmth, Kapranos is willing to try things he would've been afraid to 20 years ago, like the timpani drums inspired by Greek sonics on "Black Eyelashes." "That's the holy grail," he explains. "It's to take ideas that are complex, both in their conception and also with what you're doing in the delivery, but to not make it — like we were saying about those bands with no ideas but that are difficult to listen to — kind of the opposite of that. Having a million ideas, but making it as comprehensible as possible."
And if the goal is to flaunt Franz Ferdinand's strong sense of self — one that's comfortable with its past and having fun seeing what sticks now — Kapranos feels they've succeeded.
"That's the grail, isn't it? It's to find to know your identity and stay true to it, but to try and find something new — and new ways of doing it."