Ep 38: Alex Kapranos

were there. So we're talking about the Strokes, Yaya Yeahs, LCD sound System interval, the Rapture TV on the radio, all starting with artists Live Jonathan fire Eater. Everyone has their era of music growing up, and this was mine. If you've not come across it yet, stick it on the Christmas list. It is really good. My guest on

this podcast is actually in it. He wasn't in one of those New York bands, but he was in the thick of the scene at the time, and it got me thinking also about the first time that I saw

Franz Ferdinand. I was a student in Cardiff and they by then at this point in late two thousand and five, they were an arena rock band Take Me Out You'll remember Crash the top three in the charts a couple of years before, and the Glasgow band had won the Mercury Prize for their self titled debut album, bagged brit Awards after that, got nominated for Grammys and supported You Too on a stadium tour.

and we had this conversation. He just got back from Europe and we talked about lots of stuff, including his travels to Cuba right back at the start of the year. What it's been like changing the lineup of the band the past eighteen months and going through that, and also how he's learned that having a dog in the studio can actually help you make.

that together and keep your ears peeled for that. Until then, I should leave you with Midnight Chats Episode thirty eight with Alex Kapranos.

still really love. I mean, I love that people are excited and want to talk about it, but it can be quite It makes you doubt your identity to agree when you say, I think it's just unusual to talk about yourself for long periods of time. Yeah, actually know that's not true. I have some friends who love talking about themselves. Maybe I should get them to do this.

friends or go to like an attraction or gallery. Is this anyway you particularly like going because you know, oh, I know I can catch up with so and so, or I can go and see a bit of this.

But he was going to see Noibout and I couldn't get tickets. I know, I know it would have been really good, and also I wouldn't have been able to get away in time. But my friend Sam Potter from Late of the Pier, he's now living in Berlin, so I got to hang out with Sam. And you know, it's always to go to places, you know, like if I was in Berlin, I always end up in eight millimeter. Ord's Giftda's gift is the bar barry from Magua opened up a little while ago. But then Sam took us

to some new places. Good to discover new place there was in Paris, and got to hang out with Philippe, who we just made the record with. Yeah, I feel quite at home in Paris at the moment because we spent quite a few weeks there earlier in the year recording. So this is Philip Ziddar that you've done the record with, Philip M. Zadar, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, what's he likes a character?

like that. Oh yeah, having some transformative life experience. He's the kind of guy who is the catalyst for that sort of thing. The wild card. Yeah, yeah, he is. And you can tell that he's always been like that in his life as well. Quite interesting life too, you know, he had to go in the army when he was young before he did any studio work, and was a medic and the Paratrip regiment as well, and all these sorts of things. He's had a really interesting and bizarre life.

But to have a character and the studio is great because for me, that's what you're really looking for from a producer. You want that kind of wild person who's going to push you to do something you wouldn't normally do if they weren't there, you know, Like do.

that sort of world. I've never worked with him, but he always credits himself as an engineer and not not a producer, even though he has this just to sound I think you also have. But I feel for producers themselves that you have the active ones. The ones who play an active role have two approaches. They're either adversarial

or avuncular. You know, they either want to be your friend and help you along to get to something together, whether they become part of the gang, the social group, the pack of dogs all moving towards the same thing, which Philip definitely is. And then you have the more of the fuel spectral approach of putting a gun against your head till you play that chord right.

than I am at the moment. When we have people on the podcast, they often talk.

We had Nadine Shah on a while ago. She was talking about how she's like an avid gig goer, and she was surprised to learn that a lot of people, when we speak to them, a lot of artists don't tend to go and see other bands, which I don't know what you're like, but obviously, as somebody who certainly has put on numerous gigs over the years and is kind of like a fan of other artists, I imagine you

probably do see quite a lot of bands. But some people really want to close down and not really have any music infiltrate their brain when they're trying to create something themselves, and others are the opposite way. They want to consume everything and just find those moments of inspiration.

I loved it. And I went to a gig last night up in the Finsbury Yeah, yeah, which I'd never been to for a gig before, like a nice backroom, like classic old London pub back room kind of thing. I want to see Maggie Brown and she was really cool. Yeah, I loved it. But I know what you mean though about not wanting to bring something else in, because sometimes

you do feel your your brain is saturated. And I'm also wary about when you're at certain points in the creative process of you know how the things you shouldn't put in the fridge because they have too strong a flavor. It's like like you don't put blue cheese next to the butter or whatever because I don't know, whatever, it's bananas. That's another one, like like bananas are going to make your margarine taste funny. I sometimes feel it's like that if you if you over listen to a piece of

music while you're recording. I'm wary of it because I don't want that that flavor to enter my creative fridge.

never played in the band. And yeah, so on the night at the time of the bells, we were watching this incredible sort of percussive Cuban band playing and it felt really wild and how New Year should be full of energy and optimism despite the wider political situation.

I got chatting to a guy on the side of the road about chatting. I know five words of Spanish. It was kind of in sign language, really, but he was showing me his car. Was obviously really proud of this, this old fifties cars, and like a lot of the cars, it looks like a toll banger, but I really cared for banger and lots of hours of love and preservation gone into it. But when he lifted up the bonnet, he showed me the engine, and the engine wasn't the

original engine. And most of those cars don't have the original engines. They have what's essentially Soviet era tractor engines in them, and when they're driving around, they're producing these clouds and clouds of diesel fumes everywhere, and all city has this air of diesel around it. And yeah, I think Cuba is a good example of a place where you arrive with expectations and they're subtly confounded. Good music as well. I love the music. I found that incredible,

fascinating place there. Yeah, I loved it. An amazing place.

we were getting ourselves in a shape to record. And I guess we could have gone into the studio at that time. We could have actually gone into the studio a lot earlier, but we wanted to do it in a kind of flipped way. It's when I was I was doing a thing the other day and met Felix from the Maccabees, and he said something that the kind

of struck me. He said, he's talking about when bands make an album and he's talking about touring, and he was saying, Yeah, bands spent ages making an album and then they spent a year touring and by the end of that year, they've learned how to play the songs. And what we wanted to was kind of like to subvert that's because it's true, that's that is what bands do. You do all this stuff in the studio and then you kind of go, oh shit, how are we going

to play this now? And we wanted to do the opposite. We wanted to write the songs, like create a songbook, and that's what we was stuck doing write the end of twenty fifteen, So like have a song where that could be played in any form, so that you can have, you know, play them as a purely electronic song, play them with a different tempo, play them acoustically, play them elect well, whatever you want, because the song would be

strong enough to stand up to it. So write the songs, then work out how you're going to perform it, and work out a sound that's new to you. Because with us, it's the beginning of a new decade for the band and new new lineup, literally a new decade. Last album we did was the end of ten years of the band, so this one feels like, yeah, the beginning of a

new decade. So you get a new sound, and we wanted to be able to play it and play it live and tight and really good, like we'd been on the road for a year, and so when we went into the studio, which was the beginning of March this year, we tracked in six days. But we could only do that because we've been spending a year and a half getting it together as well.

like a great, great film. But there's the section where they're auditioning a new basis and the poor producer guys, his face is really glum because he can tell he wants to be the bassist all along but when they're auditioning him, they came in to play old classic Metallica songs. And I just realized the other day that that's the opposite of what we did when we were looking for a new member. Julian didn't play any of the old

songs until we actually had a gig to do. And so we spent all these months getting a record together and not once had we even like mentioned one of the old songs. Never mine played them. And as for an audition, well, we we went for a curry mother India's curry show in mother in Hiscafe rather in Glasgow who he used to deliver curries for a long time ago. And yeah, so because I think it's key. You know, a band is a group, it's a gang, it's a it's a social group, and you've got to get on.

And so I wanted to see if we got on with Julian and had laugh And then a couple of days later my studios down to southwest Scotland near Doune Free starts away near a small village and the first thing we did when we got down there was go to the pub and have a few more drinks and see how we got on and you know, we knew we were having a laugh. We knew that we got on and then we went in and played music and yeah, that was cool. But it was new music and new things.

But I hadn't met Julian before. I knew his work, before he played with us. He had a solo project called Miamiao on Chemical Underground Records. And last year I was over in Ireland for a film called Lost in France, which was kind of about some of the history of the Glasgow music scene. It's particularly about Chemical Underground Records. But I was over and we were visiting this place where a few of us had played twenty years earlier,

this small town in Moron. Anyway, I was over in Galway for the premiere of this film and that sounds really grand. Premiere of the film was actually sewn and literally shown in the back of a caravan, a very big caravan admittedly, but it was. It was really cool. The Golbie Film Festival. If you think of going to the film festival, it's it's my kind of film festival.

It's always an amazing talent as well. Anyway, I was there with a student from Maguay and Emma and Paul from the Delgados, and I said to them in passing, oh, do you know anyone in Glasgow who would be cool to meet music with? And all of them said, yeah, Julian because Emmon Paul had worked at them before with Chemical Underground, and Stuart's girlfriend had been working with them too, and yeah, worked out recommendations not auditions.

But also seriously, I do believe that a band is a product of it's A band has a personality, and it's a product of the multiplication of the personalities that are in it, and you have to get those personalities right. And also, like I could say, you could play he was a good, good enough musician, you know, I can show them how to play the parts and the way we play. That's not going to be that's something you just work out.

moments when you do something like that. But to be able to collaborate with other people people and know that it works is quite refreshing, and it gives you. It gives you sucker, it gives you strength to see that, yeah, you know, we can do this again. And if you ever attempt anything like that, you the only way to make it work is to be open and embrace your your your vulnerability. And if you're showing your vulnerability, then other people will show theirs as well, and that's when

you make something strong together. It's funnly like, I do think it was a gang, but I do think of it as a pack as well, particularly and it's partly because when we were recording before Dino joined the Fifth member was Alvi. Alvi is Bob's dog, and so Alvi was actually in the studio with us, so a lot of the time when we were writing the songs on this record. So yeah, Bob would come down and from

Glasgow to my place and bring Alvi with him. And I remember, like, after you've been doing it for a couple of weeks, just like, are you sure that always under this, like like you know, like it's it is? He okay, like hanging out and and being in the studio and and I know he'd win sometimes when Paul would get behind the drum kit, but generally you'd be just kind of like sitting there and you're going going for a walk and whatever, and uh and Bob, are

you kidding? He totally loves it. Was oh really and he's like yeah, because he's part of the pack. And I was like, oh, God, of course, yeah, that's how he sees it. He sees it. We're all a pack together, and dogs are pack animals, and I think we're kind of pack animals. I think not all musicians, but band

members are pack animals. But to go back to the vulnerability thing, if you look at the way that dogs behave in a pack when they get to sort of meet each other, or you think of like if you're going to say hello to a dog, you've got to pet a dog, and the dog wants to be a friend. What do they do. The first thing they do is they roll on their back, waggle their waggle their legs in the air, and look to how their tommy scratch or whatever. But what they're actually doing with that is

fascinating because they're actually showing their vulnerability. They're exposing. In the wild, what they would be doing is they'd be exposing all of their you know, soft organs and saying to the other dogs like like, hey, I am no threat here, I am totally vulnerable. I'm not gonna go for you. And that's how you make a packwork. Everybody has to show their vulnerability and say, hey, we're all in this together. We can all attack if we want to,

but here's our vulnerability. Let's let's embrace it and let's let's share it.

it Ryan. It's I kind of like, is this something you could sort us out with? And I think, oh God, here we go, right, okay. I was thinking, I'll just speak to some of the speak to one of the engineers, see see what's going on in the local scene, like see what they need. And it's like, I said, all right, right, what were you after? And it's like, well, do you think you could see if we could get like a cute dog to come down at the studio. I was like, ah, literally,

wasn't egging that? Yeah yeah, And I was like, all right, okay, let me let me ask around, see what the local scene is, see what I can saw you out with. And sure enough, like when the engineers had a a rather elderly labrador that came down hung out in the in the studio and dogs are cool because they any tension and any atmosphere is diluted when a dog's there, because you know, you go over and you pat the dog.

It's also like, you know how parents behave in a certain way in front of a kid, or you know, when couples don't argue in front of strangers. I think people are like that in front of a dog as well. You don't want to be a prick in front of a dog, you know, like like I don't want Alvy to see me being a dick to Bob, you know, like he's not gonna think that's cool, you know, not

that would be addicted Bob anyway. Bob's lovely. Also, the other thing is on a practical level, dogs they need to exercise and you know, they need to do follow the calls of nature, and they need to go outside. And when you're in the studio, it's it's really easy to get caught up in whatever it is you're doing, completely obsessed with. I'm a really obsessive type who will totally lose track of the outside world if there's an

idea to follow, which can be really unhealthy. You know, you need to get perspective, you need to step away from things, and sometimes I like the discipline to do it myself. But if aalve is there, he wants to go out and he wants to have a walk, And so you go out and you exercise and you appreciate the Southwest of Scotland climate which is always refreshing.

you see. You know, when when when your your your brain is clogged up with a problem or sorts. Yeah, chopping a bit of wood, like it's usually when it gets sorted out that in a good shower.

you're doing. And it's a it is a really valuable volleyable lesson.

great football why my football career was cut short. I'm an asthmatic and I've always had pretty bad asthma and dogs can sometimes set me off quite badly, but not Aldi because the hypoallergenic dogs, Like God, it sounds like such a burgoo dog. No, he doesn't have for he has hair, which is really cool for me because I can like get up close to him without my eyes swelling up and me needing to reach for my inhaler.

There's a song called lazy Boy where the message is probably most straightforward on the record, where I was lying in my girlfriend's bed thinking I am a lazy boy, and it was purely celebrating laziness and refusing to feel guilt for it. But so, yeah, you can write from that perspective or I've written songs before, which are kind of like observed character type songs which I don't know, like a song like Jacqueline or Michael, but again about

characters that I know and could see. I'd never really written truly fictional characters before. And that kind of came about as a reaction to a record I was really obsessed with being of. I suppose the process that ended up with this record. And when we finished touring FFS, I went back to that first John Lennon record, the first Plastic Ono band record, which I always liked, but I got completely obsessed with it. You know when you get so obsessed with a record that you're just just

playing it again and again and again. And I was sitting in the room with my record player in Scotland. It was just me in the place on my own. It was me and my thoughts, and I'll just flip it over from one side to the other to the other. I'd make more tea, listen to more. I'd have a whiskey, listen to more, write something down. But I'd be listening to this record all the time. And I think it's pretty obvious why I was drawn to it, Because he was it appealed because he was in the same sort

of place then that I was in. He'd been in a band for ten years, it had finished, that decade had finished, and he was doing that introspective thing who he was, what the future was going to be, looking back on the past, and you know, and so of rejecting the past to a degree so that he could move forward into the future. And yeah, there's a lot

I could could could relate to. But what I love about that record, and I still find so powerful about that record, is the rawness and the emotional honesty that's sometimes so so brutal, it's almost difficult to digest on that record, and I found it so moving and it got me thinking that so like ever since that record, there's been this presumption amongst songwriters and singers, but also amongst fans and critics that if you are going to

achieve emotional honesty in this this form, like singing and songwriting, it has to come from the confessional. It has to come from the confessional and personal experience. And the more I thought about this as I was listening to this record, the more I thought that, well, yes, it's it's true in this case. It's true in this instance but it's not universally true, because if it was universally true, you'd have to apply it to other art forms as well.

You'd have to apply it to literature, you'd have to apply it to film, and you know, like like, well, it's it's not true. Otherwise some of the great moments in cinema, like I have no emotional impact. You know, if I look at the shower scene in Cycle like that, there's no lived experience of murder, so like it's but it's still emotionally powerful.

know it. It's She's done a set of into these series of interviews and including yourself where and put together a history of the New York rock and roll scene from two thousand and one to twenty eleven the emergency bands like The Strokes and The Rapture and LCD sound System and the Aas and previously to that, Jonathan fire Eater in those bands that were kicked it all off.

the prose of the writer itself. But it's the first time I've read a book where I actually know quite a few of the characters involved, which which is quite unsettling. It's like oh right, yeah, yeah, yeah, oh god, yeah, that's it's and I'm in it myself as well, which even though I wasn't there at the beginning of the New York thing. But yeah, honorary member, it sounds.

And also seeing the evolution of the music there and how it's oddly periods and time for various societal, geographic reasons, for political reasons, economic reasons. Sometimes it just comes together and it's ripe, it's fertile for it for a scene to emerge. And New York really really was, specifically Lower East Side and Brooklyn were very ripe at that time in a way that I kind of don't think it

is anymore. I still love New York. It's it's possibly my favorite city in the world, But like London, it's fucking expensive living now, and it has this financial repulsion to it. It's literally repelling people away from it, and

people can't afford to live there. And when you read that book, there is a real background of freedom and access to places spaces that you can occupy and do what you want to do and pursue your your your creativity, which has existed in London in the past as well, but it seems kind of redundant now, which which I find quite tragic.

McCann's film did it to a degree. It concentrated on chemical but like it touched on the sort of like the unseen part of Glasgow because there's in about ninety one I started doing a club called the Kazook Club in the thirteenth note, and I used to put on bands and lots of bands that went on to become renowned, like like Maguai had their first gig there, Stuart Murdoch

played down there before Bouncedebastian playing all sorts. So and there were always bands like Urosayatsura and byss that that sort of and the Yummi Fair and Long leg Al and saw these great bands appearing from there, but also some of the bands who were kind of the stars of that scene of the if you could put it that way at the time. So some of them didn't really get beyond the walls of that club to a degree, or certainly didn't get beyond Glasgow, and for one reason

or another just imploded. And I think every scene's got that, and it comes up in Lizzie's book a bit as well, like every scene has the the figures that you always knew were going to do something great, and then you have those that you always presume are going to do something incredible, but some for some reason or another, often it's narcotic related, they fuck it all up really drastically,

and they're the people that really fascinate me. But they're the kind of if I was going to write a book, that's that's who I'd want to write about, because I want to say, you know about those guys. Listen to trout Right shine a light on some of the yeah the lesser told you. Yeah, yeah, definitely.

we're going to do this. And then there's there's another fundamental decision that you have to make after that you have to say it right Okay, if we're going to continue, are we going to like look back at we made a decade's worth of music albums? Right? Do we look

back on that decade and live in that decade? And I'm not gonna mention names, but there's plenty of bands that I know that do tour, tend to do the festival circuit, and they live in the decade that's formed their band, and it's as if creatively they never left a decade. Okay, they might release the odd song occasionally,

but they're essentially living in their black catalog. Totally fine, you know, like they're great musicians, made a great a great mark, or you decide the last thing you made in that decade was the end point, that was the punctuation mark. It's now time to start the new decade. And it's remarkably refreshing. That's the word I'm looking for. Energizing. No, it's unburdening. I don't know if that's the right word. Is what's in my head. It's it's like it's like

you've you've finished a job. Like it's like you're a delivery driver. You've finished a job and you're like you you're on your bike like, you know, one of those guys on the bikes around Delver. Yeah, Like I'm like a delivery drive, you know, that big black thing that they have, the big box. Like, I've finished that. I'm taking the thing off and it's there, it's all done. I don't have to pick it up again. That decade is over. I don't have to pick it up ever

ever again. You know, I still enjoy playing the songs from that time, great, you know like that, but I don't feel I live in that decade anymore. I've left that decade behind, and I'm a very unnostalgic person, and so I find that the most refreshing thing of all being able to leave the leave the past alone. So I feel good.