McCarthy: I think this album sounds very much like us. It’s fine to use chords for the writing of the main melody, but when it comes to the final arrangement we’d lose the chords so that progressions were suggested by the melodies, rather than played out. Our main goal is always to just write some good songs and then record them.ĭid you have any specific visions for the overall sound of the new album? Kapranos: One principle was the shedding of chords in favor of melody and countermelody. It’s not the specific instrument, but the whole thing. Nick McCarthy: Our playing is just writing music. Every song has a live performance of the four of us in a room together at the heart of it. Nick and I write most of the music together, although sometimes Bob and I start with a lyrical idea that I’ll work on with the guitar or piano. That’s quite different from our last LP, where we started off with grooves and beats upon which we wrote melodies and then lyrics. We didn’t go near the studio until we had songs that we could all play and we understood how they worked. What was the writing process like for Right Thoughts? Alex Kapranos: The majority of writing was done before the recording. We recently spoke to the two guitarists about devising great parts, recording Right Thoughts, their meticulous miking techniques, and their fondness for offbeat gear from Harmony, Silvertone, Hagstrom, Hoyer, Selmer, and Traynor. In fact, he started playing guitar the year before Ferdinand made it big. McCarthy’s guitar work is informed by his training as a classical pianist and double bassist, while Kapranos playing is refreshingly naïve. Both players have fresh perspectives on the art of guitar, though they stem from very different backgrounds. If kneejerk dismissiveness hurts anyone, it’s players who could learn a thing or two from Kapranos and McCarthy about composition, mood, and sparseness. McCarthy is a bit more lighthearted about it, recounting how, while the band was tracking their latest album, Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action, he tried to master a fast picking technique. “I tend not to write parts to show off my skill or new techniques,” Kapranos says. The two Scots are completely out of the guitar-ego loop. Such attitudes don’t hurt the feelings of Alex Kapranos and Nick McCarthy, Franz Ferdinand’s guitarists, one bit.
When a new band strikes it as big as Franz Ferdinand did in 2003 with their danceable post-punk radio hit “Take Me Out,” hardcore guitarists can be dismissive, ignoring subtleties like the intro’s deceptively simple tempo changes, or how brilliantly the lean, snarling dual guitar parts shift and slither within the relentless tide of the band’s lockstep rhythm section.
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