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Franz Ferdinand and Sparks announce album, FFS

By | Published on Wednesday 1 April 2015

FFS

Five years ago, we ran an April Fools Day story in which we claimed that EMI was merging bands in a bid to cut costs. It was clearly the greatest April Fool of all time, which is why we’ve never done one again. Though The Sun has something similar today.

Meanwhile, we’ve been told this morning, such a merger is now happening in real life, because Franz Ferdinand and Sparks are set to release an album under the name FFS. OK, yes, this announcement has also arrived on 1 Apr, but if this is a big joke then someone has gone to a lot of trouble over it. Like booking actual gigs and listing an album on iTunes. Also, they initially announced the tie-up ages ago, which really isn’t in the spirit of this most awful of days.

So, now we’re all confident that this is really happening, I’ll let you know that the album, also titled ‘FFS’, will be released through Domino on 8 Jun, with first single, ‘Piss Off’, out now.

The collaboration actually has its roots way back in the early days of Franz Ferdinand, says Sparks’ Russell Mael: “We thought ‘Take Me Out’ was very cool, and wouldn’t it be nice to say hello when they came to Los Angeles? We met and decided then it would be great to do something together. We put forward a couple demos, one was ‘Piss Off’. But they got swept up by everything, and it didn’t happen at that time”.

Ten years later, the two bands bumped into each other at the 2013 edition of Coachella and decided that they should probably get on with it.

“We approached it the way bands do with their first record”, says Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos. “We had the songs first, rehearsed them and then recorded it all together, in a room. So no hanging around or fannying about. The real motivation was to make something new, not ‘Franz featuring Russell Mael’, or ‘Sparks with Franz Ferdinand backing them'”.

The new band is set to tour Europe this summer, starting with a sold out show at Glasgow’s Art School on 16 and with a London date at The Troxy on 29 Jun.

Listen to ‘Piss Off’ here:



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