Franz Ferdinand Creates Disco for Desperate Times at The Atlantis

The alternative indie band took the audience back to the mid-2000s — in the best way possible.

Spotify recently curated a playlist for me called “Dive Bar Anthems.” There’s a lot of LCD Soundsystem, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and The Strokes in this mix of mid-aught indie hits, but only one Franz Ferdinand song: the stomping “Take Me Out.” And that’s a shame, because when I think back to this sliver of time, Franz Ferdinand was just as ubiquitous in my life as those “Meet Me in the Bathroom” mainstays. 

Returning to D.C. less than one year after its sold-out show at 9:30 Club, the most important Scottish band ever named after an assassinated Austrian archduke played one of the first shows at The Atlantis. Franz Ferdinand played mostly songs from their latest album, a “best of” compilation called “Hits to the Head” that instantly transported me back 20 years. 

Franz Ferdinand. Photo by Jordan Grobe.

Franz Ferdinand’s first smash single “Darts of Pleasure” came out in 2003, a period of early millennial anxiety and nervous energy. And the band arguably captured the zeitgeist as a limbo of dread better than any of their peers, even more so than The Strokes. Everyone was worried about the next 9/11 or the Iraq War, but it was also — in retrospect — maybe a simpler time of anxiety: pre-2008 recession, pre-Brexit, pre-pandemic. So, what did we do? We drank, smoked, danced, hooked up, worried a lot and tried to live through all of this. 

And this same song — the seventh of the group’s 18-song set at The Atlantis — embraces all of that, all but giving off the pong of sweat: stinking like anxiety, sex funk and, of course, a crowded dance floor. The lyrics are all intertwined with seduction and danger, and the bassline — courtesy of founding member Bob Hardy — pumps like a marathoner’s heart, before concluding with a Dadaist chant in German. It’s suave, sexy, a little pretentious and a bit sleazy — in the best possible way. It’s art school slumming and posturing at its peak. 

And that’s what the appeal of Franz Ferdinand’s songs have always been: They create disco for desperate times. With their post-punk riffs and Russian avant-garde styling, there is something of the excesses of Weimar Republic Berlin in their art house pop, but it’s still an explosive sound that speaks to the now. We’ve always lived in uncertainty, and we’ve always danced it off. 

The evening’s set list included few surprises, but all the classics span two decades: The Q-friendly flirtiness of “Michael,” the dashed-hope noir of “The Dark of the Matinée,” the Spaghetti Western ballad “Walk Away” and the lusty “No You Girls.” Of course, the evening included “Take Me Out,” which is arguably every bit as anthemic as The White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army.” (Go ahead, imagine a stadium of soccer fans stomping to this beat and shouting out the chorus.) Brooklyn-based Sid Simons, whose new album “Beneath the Brightest Smile” drops on June 23, was the opener with wide-ranging, saxophone-heavy power pop songs. 

Alex Kapranos remains an incredibly energetic and charismatic frontman, wearing his quasi-fascist suits, leading the audience in chorus singalongs. In the blazing encore “This Fire,” he even convinced everyone to sit on the floor during the extended bridge. (He noted that The Atlantis’ floor is still so clean and polished, but he didn’t have any problem convincing the 9:30 Club crew to drop down last year either). We all exploded back up at the same time, ready to burn this city and continue dancing the night away. 

In the liner notes for “Hits to the Head,” Kapranos writes a very earnest and reflective essay about the band’s history from their working class Glasgow roots to international acclaim, their astronomical highs and occasional missteps (there are no nadirs recorded here), and the band members and producers who’ve come and gone over the years. 

The band’s lineup has changed a bit over time, but it’s currently a true who’s who of Scotland’s best musicians. In 2017, both Julian Corrie (keyboard and moog) and Dino Bardot (guitar) joined the band, and in 2021, drummer Audrey Tait rounded out the group. Tait brings a surety and steadiness to the band’s overindulgence; Corrie contributes the moody, dreamy synth underlying all the works; Bardot just rocks out. Bassist Hardy and Kapranos, the only two founding members left, have always shared the same arthouse cinema vocabulary and sonic aesthetic.

Best-of compilations, Kapranos explains, offer an entry point to an artist’s oeuvre or allow us to enjoy all the best works collected together rather than the contemporary model of single songs existing in some sort of consumerist vacuum. (Not to say that Franz Ferdinand’s songs haven’t been used for Apple products and television soundtracks over the years.)

Or, even more succinctly, he states, “That’s the point of this record: the hits to the head, hits to the heart, hits to the feet as they hit the dance floor.” 

The Atlantis: 2047 9th St. NW, DC; theatlantis.com // @theatlantis_dc

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Colleen Kennedy

Colleen Kennedy writes about art, culture and music for District Fray. She is also the Publicist and Managing Editor at Shakespeare Theatre Company.