Quotes of the Day

A few months from now, it seems likely that Franz Ferdinand, the Glasgow-based rock band that's hotter this second than a Paris Hilton download, will travel from gig to gig via a record company's limousine. But for now, the quartet seems content to carry their own guitars on the London Underground. On a January afternoon, they boarded in north London, stumbling through the barriers with kit and overnight bags like well-equipped buskers. A few stops down the line and Franz Ferdinand — no relation to the assassinated Archduke — emerges on a rainy Charing Cross Road in the city center. It couldn't be more apt: the band's rise from the underground- music scene has been faster than any London tube-station escalator.

Almost unheard of a few months ago, this month Franz Ferdinand found itself on the cover of Britain's tastemaking bible the NME with the headline: this band will change your life. Their second single, a riff-driven disco stomp called Take Me Out, entered the British charts at No. 3, boding well for the release of their first eponymous album on Feb. 9.

Why all the hype? Their winning formula is exciting but familiar: a tightly arranged take on late-'70s influences, from Talking Heads to Joy Division with a lyrical sensibility closer to Jarvis Cocker, neatly boiled down to beat-driven guitar tunes you can dance to. And if they also sound a little like the Strokes, well, hey, who can blame them?

No, the backbeat to the current clamor is the sound of the British record industry catching up to a band that for once didn't come looking for them. Franz Ferdinand came together around the Glasgow School of Art. (Indeed, drummer Paul Thomson, a former artist's model, has the curious distinction of having been painted in the nude by the girlfriends of all his future band mates.) And their first gig was in a bedroom as part of a friend's exhibition, "Girl Art," where their objective was to make girls dance. But don't call them art rock, or "art wave." "I hate that," protests guitarist and lead singer Alex Kapranos. "People always call us arty. What the hell does that mean? It's not like we got a band together as some kind of conceptual abstract sound sculpture. We got together to make a pop band."

Maybe, but they did gain notoriety through their own arty happenings. In the spirit of Andy Warhol's Factory, the band occupied the top floors of an abandoned Glasgow art-deco warehouse dubbed "the Chateau." They would host events, playing to a word-of-mouth crowd, while others used the space for art installations. "We were socializing with these people and they all had ideas and they all wanted to do their work in the same way as we wanted to play," explains Kapranos. "It seemed like the most obvious thing in the world to get art people together."

Except to the police. Finally busted one night, 500 people headed down one staircase while the police charged up another, and Kapranos was arrested for various noise and safety charges and running an illegal bar (the charges were dropped). Undeterred, the band simply moved the Chateau to a disused Victorian courtroom and jailhouse in the city's east end — which they still occupy — hosting gigs in the court while friends use the cells as art galleries.

By the time Franz Ferdinand deigned to play conventional venues in early 2003, the music business had caught on. "We did one gig and there was something like 48 guys from record companies there," says Kapranos. "One guy was holding his mobile phone up in the middle of the set." The band eventually signed to the small, respected independent Domino Records, then hit the recording studio.

Although the New York City, postpunk influences are obvious, the band tends to cite lesser-known Scottish bands of the late '70s, like the Fire Engines and Orange Juice. But their sound is their own, with a driving beat supplied by Thompson and bassist Bob Hardy. Kapranos' tense, observational lyrics — "Although my lover lives in a place that I can't live/ I find I like a life this lonely/ It rips and pierces me, I love the rip of nerves/ The rip that wakes me" — are augmented by occasional lines in German, the influence of Munich-raised guitarist Nick McCarthy. "You always get German bands singing in English," says McCarthy, "we just turn it round." He adds: "There's a great German art scene too. German is cool." Remember, they're not art rock.

With the album in the bag, Franz Ferdinand is ready to do what they enjoy most: perform live, and they don't care where. Set to play to 100,000 people at Edinburgh's New Year's Eve bash, the event was sabotaged by bad weather. But the band still made it to a local friend's flat to play to a party of 50 people. Gigs like that are going to be increasingly rare; this band won't stay underground for long.

• HUGH PORTER
• Scottish group Franz Ferdinand moves into the spotlight