FFS (FRANZ FERDINAND & SPARKS) at the Phoenix (410 Sherbourne), Wednesday (September 30), 8 pm, all ages. $35. ticketfly.com.
After casually exchanging rough long-distance musical sketches for a potential collaboration, the first song that Franz Ferdinand and Sparks wrote together as the powerful pop rock group FFS was Collaborations Don’t Work.
“In a way, it was cool that it was the first one,” says singer Alex Kapranos over the phone from London, “because the song addresses all the issues that collaborating can produce. I think addressing them straight on right at the beginning, and with a sense of humour, made the whole process a lot easier.”
Hailing from Glasgow, Kapranos co-founded Franz Ferdinand in 2002, and they remain one of the most popular, exciting and influential rock bands in the world. When he was a young man, he stumbled on a single by Sparks, the long-running art rock band from Culver City, California, consisting of brothers Russell and Ron Mael, and it blew his mind.
After expressing mutual admiration for one another in the press, the bands connected socially and exchanged messages and song ideas over the years. Then they secretly made one of the best, most danceable and sexy rock albums of 2015 with their self-titled debut as FFS. Beyond being a cool project, Kapranos hoped the union would draw more attention to one of his favourite bands.
A pioneering electro-pop and prototypical new wave outfit, Sparks formed in the early 1970s and achieved sporadic, somewhat regional chart success (i.e., a particular song might be big in London, another one in Paris, etc), developing a loyal following along the way.
Musicians in particular have been drawn to the instrumental and lyrical daring of Sparks, who frequently started trends just by operating outside the conventions of rock music and experimenting with sounds, theatricality and, most strikingly, humour.
“When there’s humour in whatever you’re doing musically or lyrically, it’s perceived as not having depth to it,” says Russell Mael in a separate call. “There’s this thing where if you’re writing a conventional love song, that’s being earnest. But if you do it in an unconventional way, with humour, it’s less substantial.
“A lot of things that are more hackneyed or trite are sometimes taken as having more seriousness to them, and I can never understand that. We never see things in those terms. There are often different levels within our lyrics. There might be humorous elements, but they’re deep and poignant as well.”
music@nowtoronto.com | @vishkhanna
