Forget about whatever rap collaboration you’re listening to, because FFS is the most important musical team-up of the year.
FFS united Franz Ferdinand, the original Glasgow dance-rock darlings, with Sparks, the most influential art-pop songsmiths you’ve never heard of. Together, the two bands create a new sound that is bigger and more ambitious than anything either band has ever made previously.
“The interesting thing about Sparks is that they’ve had hits in lots of different countries at different points in their career,” said Bob Hardy, bassist for Franz.
Although Sparks has remained relatively unknown within mass culture, the band has been continuously releasing artistic reinventions at a rate that rivals David Bowie. Formed by brothers Ron and Russell Mael, Sparks first caught the attention of Franz frontman Alex Kapranos back in 1994, when Kapranos became enamored with the single “Amateur Hour” from Sparks’ seminal 1974 album “Kimono My House.”
The Maels have wanted to collaborate with Franz since they heard that the latter’s band members were huge fans of Sparks. “Piss Off,” the closing song on “FFS,” was initially a composition written for Franz by Ron Mael in 2004.
Unfortunately, the Glaswegians’ sudden fame got in the way until the Mael brothers and Kapranos met the day before gigging together at Coachella in 2013. After a decade of waiting, they decided to give the project a shot.
The pseudo-supergroup’s eponymous first album often sounds like it had been symphonically gestating since those first demos, but “FFS” was recorded in a stunning 15 days after an 18-month songwriting flurry over email.
“The recording sessions were actually quite fast for us these days,” Hardy said. “It was something we very much enjoyed, recording at that speed.”
Hardy and Kapranos have both praised the album’s producer John Congleton for spurring such an impressive turnaround. And those creative fireworks, Hardy said, translated directly to the project’s stage show.
“Surprisingly quickly, there was a definite kind of excitement,” Hardy said. “After a few shows, it definitely became a very energetic show. Alex and Russell are both very lively frontmen, proper showmen.”
Hardy also excitedly described the artful interplay between the two groups.
“Russell has this very famous falsetto and Alex has this kind of baritone,” Hardy said of the two singers’ distinct styles. “But they happen to work together very well when they harmonize.”
The interplay between the two groups is tantalizing, the songs taking madcap twists and turns that defy regular pop structures. “Police Encounters” matches Sparks’ sickly sweet melodies with the frantic rhythms present on Franz’s stranger tracks. Ron’s staccato-heavy piano playing on “So Desu Ne” adds a level of bouncy energy that you never knew Franz needed. “The Power Couple” takes the oppressive, spooky tones of Franz’s “Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action” and adds a layer of dramatic vocal interaction and tense, unresolved phrasing.
Through it all, there is a sense that the two groups have been orbiting this one magnum opus for their entire careers. It’s like listening to Aerosmith perform with The Rolling Stones.
While neither group has given up their unique identity, however, FFS is more than just a one-time pet project.
“We were, all six of us, taking the project seriously, as if it were a new band,” Hardy said. “We decided to put as much energy and sweat into this project as we would one of our own records.”
Other reviewers and music news outlets have pointed out the irony of the album’s best track, “Collaborations Don’t Work.” Considering the coherence of the project, the song may in retrospect be less of an ironic joke and more of a middle finger to those collaborations that ended up ruined by weighty songwriting and self-aggrandizement. Collaborations might not work, but FFS isn’t a collaboration. It’s a cohesive band, and it’s fantastic.
Hardy consistently referred to FFS as “the band” or “a six-piece.” When he talked about the project, he spoke with the excitement and anticipation of a member of a new band, not a combination of two disparate groups. Even so, neither group expected the collaboration to be such a success.
“We couldn’t have predicted that this was going to happen if you’d asked us two years ago,” said Hardy. “But we’re keeping our options open. We don’t know what’s next beyond the American tour.”
FFS is playing at Orpheum Theatre Friday at 7:30 p.m.
