Franz Ferdinand at the Pavelló Olímpic de Badalona

Music wasn’t the only thing used to wow the crowd on Saturday 5th Dember in Badalona, as Franz Ferdinand’s singer Alex Kapranos greated the crowd in Catalan with a hearty “Bona nit!”

However, what the crowd had really crossed Barcelona for was to hear the band play songs such as “Take Me Out”, “No You Girls” (below), “Ulysses” and “Do You Want To?” and they weren’t dissappointed. After rattling off song after song to an enthusiastic audience, the four-piece from Glasgow did start to flag a little, but the musicianship was always tight.

But the encore provided some surprises such as when all four members came out to play the drums (see video below) – according to Kapranos their last album was inluenced by African drumming – and finally said their good nights with a superb performance of “Lucid Dreams”, a track that suffers on their last album for being too trance-like but worked live as the sequenced synth just drove on and on while each member of the band departed the stage.

All in all a great gig which managed plenty of television news time of TV3 – Barcelona will definitely welcome back Franz Ferdinand, whenever they choose to come back. And with a seven thousand strong audience, a long way to a gig they played in Razzmatazz years ago in front of just 40 people!

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