![]() ![]() We have a strong personality as a band and I feel that’s something to be embraced. We wanted it to sound like Franz Ferdinand, but new simultaneously. Kapranos: “As for the music, there were a couple of simple principles. This brings us to lesson two: The art is in your personality. There’s an underlying quiet positivity in those words that seemed to sum up the mood of the LP quite well.” ![]() I am not a Buddhist myself, and none of the band are, but what I love about the expression is that it is not an answer, but something that provokes you into working out what the answers may be yourself. In the context of the song ‘Right Action,’ it felt like a good response to the emotional dissonance of the verses. When asked about the album title, Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action, an apparent allusion to the Buddhist Noble Eightfold Path, Kapranos says, “Yes, it is. There wasn’t a unifying concept that the songs were written to, but a couple of themes do appear across the LP, such as the desire for spiritual answers in a secular age or emotional paradoxes.” Then it became misquoted as if we had written an album inspired by the bookЕeach song is about something different from varied sources of inspiration. “I used an Alasdair Gray novel as an example of emotional vulnerability that I appreciated. “It’s always a form of Chinese whispers where a quote gets taken out of context to undermine its original meaning,” laments Kapranos on the results of a recent interview that has since become the foundation to the entry for Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action on Franz Ferdinand’s Wikipedia page. Perhaps ironically, or perhaps fittingly, their few words were almost immediately misconstrued. It wasn’t until the official album announcement three years later that the band opened the door to the media, and began discussing the direction of their new record. Since then, previews of the upcoming material were trickled out only in direct-to-fan transmissions at live shows. Or in Kapranos’ succinct words, it was “tainted by bullshit.” So they began small in February of 2010 with a brief mention that the band had begun working on a new album. Until now, the band has been relatively mum on the build-up to this new release, wanting to avoid the pitfalls of the PR hype machine that they felt weighed down their previous effort, Tonight: Franz Ferdinand. Lesson one for Franz? Don’t talk about it. So we spoke with him on the build-up to Franz Ferdinand’s upcoming album, Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action (Domino Records) to learn how to piece together a record when everyone is watching…without getting twisted. Kapranos, successful in his own eyes or not, has crossed an undeniable line of exposure. I don’t know if we got there, that’s not for us to decide, but it’s a pretty good aspiration to have.” I’m not talking about a wider global context, necessarily, but what’s around you. ![]() He explains, “I reckon that with a band, you should aspire to be a similar pivotal point – that before your band, things were never quite the same as they were after them. ![]()
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