Franz Ferdinand: The Power Station 2025

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Franz Ferdinand and I had a blast hanging out at the Power Station at BerkleeNYC where we chatted about the new album, The Human Fear, and the band played three tunes — "Bar Lonely," "Audacious," and "Night or Day" — that were all captured on first takes.

The quintet — Alex Kapranos, Bob Hardy, Julian Corrie, Dino Bardot, and Audrey Tait – formed a loose circle in the studio and generously welcomed me into the center of it. I was able to immerse myself in the music and segue naturally into talking between songs. Kapranos, as frontman and primary songwriter, fielded most of my questions but bassist Hardy contributed a great flashback to the early days of the group in Glasgow when he and Alex worked in a kitchen together.

The band has some history in the room. They recorded most of their second album, You Could Have It So Much Better, at the Power Station that was then known (as it was from 1996 to 2017) as Avatar Studios before reverting back to the name the space first had when it opened in 1977.

Kapranos, Hardy, and I, over some pre-session sushi, also figured out that I hosted a session with Franz Ferdinand there about 11 years ago at the time they released their fourth album, Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action. During that interval, Corrie on piano, Bardot on rhythm guitar, and Tait on drums, have all joined the band. I spoke with Tait a bit off mic and she mentioned that, despite this being the first Franz Ferdinand LP for her and Bardot, they both got to get their feet wet in the studio a couple of years ago for the two new songs on the Hits to the Head compilation.

The Human Fear has been a long time coming. It’s the first album of new music from Franz Ferdinand in almost seven years. Despite being keen on breaking that drought, they didn’t rush things. They didn’t start recording until they were familiar enough with the new material to play it live. Once they began putting things on tape, they recorded a slew of songs and were able to choose ones that fit together well, leaving the others for another day. Kapranos spoke about the camaraderie of the group and it was easy to observe.

I’ll remember the afternoon I spent with them as full of dynamite music that was amplified by the positive energy that the band radiated.

[Recorded: 12/9/24; Engineering by The Power Station at BerkleeNYC; produced by Meghan Suma.]