Franz Ferdinand played the Wiltern in Los Angeles on Tuesday to a sold-out audience. The show is in support of the tour for their latest album, “Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action,” released in August of last year. It was the indie rock band’s first album release in four years.
As soon as the clock struck 9 p.m., the Scottish rockers led off their two-hour affair with the LA crowd with “Bullet.” Following, too much delight of the audience, was “No You Girls” and then “The Dark of the Matinee.”
For each song, different light settings cascaded the stage. A screen in the back showed different shapes, images and themes to various songs, bringing a lot of color to the black-and-white dressed band’s stage performance.
Franz Ferdinand played a mixture of songs from all four of their albums. Songs off their first three albums seemed to be enjoyed by the audience more than songs off the new album.
The band never seemed to slow down. It seemed like they didn’t even catch their breath, playing songs almost immediately after the conclusion of another.
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From the band’s initial set, 20 songs filled the airways for the SoCal crowd. Of those songs were: “Auf Achse,” “Fresh Strawberries,” “Lucid Dreams,” “Michael” and “Ulysses.” When the band played “Take Me Out,” the audience exploded with screams and cheers and sang along for the entirety of the song.
After “Outsiders,” the four-piece band exited the stage. But, like in almost any show, they would return for an encore.
The very soft, melodic “Jacqueline” was played first. Following the next song, “Right Action,” Franz Ferdinand brought out opening artist Cate Le Bon to the stage to take the reins for a cover of Blondie song “Call Me.” The cover was near-perfect to the original.
An extended version of “This Fire” was played after. Lead singer and guitarist Alex Kapranos had the fans sing part of the chorus over-and-over many times. His part started, “This fire is out of control, I’m gonna…,” and then he pointed the microphone to the crowd and they finished with, “…burn this city, burn this city.” This continued for some time.
Following was the band’s twenty-fifth and final song, “Goodbye Lovers & Friends.” The song had the perfect title to conclude the evening.
As he does in every performance, Kapranos kindly introduced each band member. Nick McCarthy is on guitar, backing vocals and keyboard, Robert Hardy is on bass and Paul Thomson is on drums.
The show was the band’s first stop in Southern California since they played at the Echoplex last July. A day later, the band played Jimmy Kimmel Live and then is going to play a few shows in Mexico.
I really wish I could’ve gone but I was out of money