Gig played on 12/09/05

A genuine treat, this - and not only for the lucky competition winners and invited media reps, since Franz Ferdinand have long since outgrown venues this size. They're here to record a show live for BBC radio and to test out a batch of new tunes from their feverishly anticipated second album, "You Could Have It So Much Better" in an environment rather more up-front and personal than a festival field. Spirits are not simply running high, they're damned near tap dancing on the ceiling.

Your correspondent realises that it's two years almost to the very day since she first saw Franz Ferdinand (at London's ICA), launching their viciously delicious, new wave-toned debut single, "Darts Of Pleasure". Then, they sounded so bracingly fresh, so daringly eccentric, that to imagine they'd become much more than a cultish concern seemed somehow reckless. But right from the start, their grasp of the essence of ebullient pop and their declared aim "to make music that makes girls dance" marked them out as the finished article, gift-wrapped and ready to go.

Fast forward one year, 363 days and around three million debut album sales world-wide and they're bounding on stage here, bright eyed and bushy tailed, led by Alex Kapranos in stylish new feather cut and snappily striped, long-sleeved T-shirt. They lunge straight in with the familiar "Jacqueline", but follow it with the new "This Boy", a full-tilt lurchathon so full of exaggerated stop-start dynamics it's almost comical. All up, they preview eight songs from the new LP, dotting them in between deliriously received faves like "Auf Asche", "Darts Of Pleasure", "Matinee", a bounce-tastic "Take Me Out" and (demented encore finale) "This Fire", which threatens to raise the roof.

New single, "Do You Want To" isn't out for another week but is greeted like an old friend. It sounds extraordinary - an inspired and zingy blend of The Damned, The Knack and The Sensational Alex Harvey Band which is all swagger, strut and glittery stomp and boasts the year's most irresistibly addictive, pop chorus - no contest. "I'm Your Villain" - which reprises the strutting guitar motif from "Take Me Out", but gives it the Thin Lizzy harmonics treatment - is another instant winner.

There are a couple of gosh-wow surprises: for newbie "Walk Away", drummer Paul Thomson steps out from behind his kit and straps on a guitar for the very first time, while chum Andy Knowles (who's also drummed with Fiery Furnaces) ably takes his place; and no fewer than three percussionists batter away at once during the extraordinary "Outsiders", a swarthy, groovily compulsive epic which suggests Duran Duran produced by DFA in a Greek taverna.

All night, Franz Ferdinand are grinning fit to shame four chemically affected Cheshire cats, clearly with the delight of once more being able to make a real connection with the assembled throng. We know how they feel - darts of pleasure, indeed.

by Sharon O'Connell