Franz Ferdinand may be one of Glasgow's most famous exports, but, as it happens, frontman Alex Kapranos also has a familial tie to Canada's biggest city.
Speaking with Exclaim!, he reveals that his family had a short stint living in Toronto when his mom was a kid, leading him to "have this romanticized idea of what Toronto was like."
"My grandfather was a joiner, a carpenter and a construction worker. And when I was a kid, he used to tell me stories of being in the 1950s, like building the skyscrapers and standing on the ice-covered girders as they were building," he says. "So I always had these very vivid descriptions of what Toronto was like for him, and so it always felt exciting to be there. And I still get that going to Toronto. Toronto was embedded in my mind as exotica from a very, very early age."
Kapranos still gets excited to visit the city to this day, which he and Franz will do this April while touring The Human Fear. "Toronto is like a comprehensible version of New York I always find, and a slightly easier version of New York as well," he continued. "Those two, they exist in the same place in my mind; they're both distinct from the rest of the country in which they live in. ... Toronto, New York and Glasgow, the true cultural capitals of their relative countries.
He also discusses his love for Vancouver, where he spent plenty of time while producing the Cribs' Men's Needs, Women's Needs, Whatever. When he visits his friends there, he notices how much the city has changed: "It's the wealth that has poured into it. And, you know, it's, huge and much bigger, and maybe there's elements of the old Vancouver that I miss to some degree, but I still really love it over there."
The Human Fear — Franz Ferdinand's sixth studio album — arrives Friday (January 10).