LIVE REVIEW: FRANZ FERDINAND AT THE ARAGON 12/10

“One cannot, ever, go back to the place which exists in memory. You would not see it with the same eyes.” When Agatha Christie first uttered these words in the late 1950s, she clearly wasn’t talking about seeing Franz Ferdinand in concert in 2024. But she could have been.

Coming 20 years after the debut of the Glasgow electro-rockers groundbreaking self-titled debut, many of the songs remained the same – yet almost everything about the band was different. Including, for starters, the band itself, which bore little resemblance to the original group. Sure, frontman Alex Kapranos looked (and sounded) as good as ever – complete with acrobatic leg kicks and preening pelvic thrusts – but besides Kapranos and bassist Bob Hardy, the entire band had been replaced, with drummer Paul Thomson being the most recent to depart the group in 2021.

Sure, the new band learned the old songs and, to be fair, played them quite competently. Yet the in-your-face energy and snarling edge of 2004 had all but vanished as the band – not to mention nearly all of their fans – were now 20 years older, with new husband and father Kapranos himself topping the age of 50 two years ago. Is it unfair to compare a band to how they sounded 20 years ago? Of course. Yet it’s also inevitable.

But perhaps the most obvious way in which this show differed from their early-aughts heyday was the fact that, somehow, they were not the headliners on this opening night of Q101’s (wait, radio is still a thing?) Twisted Xmas. That honor was inexplicably reserved for Cage the Elephant, who apparently have received more commercial success over the past two decades (who knew?)

Kapranos and company opened their tight 15-song set with 2004’s “The Dark of the Matinee” and closed with the always-electric “This Fire,” sprinkling a number of old hits and new tunes (from upcoming 2025 album The Human Fear) in between. Kapranos himself seemed full of life and happy to be in Chicago (even going so far as to call the Aragon one of the world’s great rock venues), yet he too seemed a bit thrown by the band’s lukewarm reception from the crowd.

Maybe it’s true what they say. Maybe you really can never go back. But it’s still fun as hell to try. –STORY & PHOTOS BY JAY GENTILE