Franz Ferdinand
CARDIFF UNIVERSITY
SUNDAY FEBRUARY 8, 2004
Seven thirty on a sunday night on the bottom of a bill below The Rapture and The Von Bondies is no way to treat the best new band in Britain, but then, when they were booked for this NME tour, Franz Ferdinand didn’t have a Top 3 single and No 2 album under their belt. And what an album it is, probably the most exciting art-indie debut for 20 years, all rhythmic high-tension and homo-poetic abstractions.
That excitement is palpable tonight on the streets around the building and inside the venue itself, although this could just be a response on the part of the student fraternity to being close to the latest chart sensations. That’s not being patronising, because for older members of the audience the pleasure is no less na