Latest news with #AlexKapranos
BBC News
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Franz Ferdinand and Adele Sandé open Sunderland Year of Music
Chart-topping indie rockers Franz Ferdinand and acclaimed singer-songwriter Adele Sandé are to kick off a year-long major celebration of two acts, both BRIT Award winners, will launch the Sunderland Year of Music 2025-2026 in June. It will mark Franz Ferdinand's return to Wearside for the first time in more than a decade, while Sunderland-born Sandé - formerly known as Emeli - will be making her stage debut under her real name. The gigs will kickstart a week of special live events across the city. Like Sandé, Franz Ferdinand frontman Alex Kapranos spent his early years in Sunderland before moving to the last time his band played in the city was in March self-titled debut album won the 2004 Mercury Prize and their sixth, entitled The Human Fear, was released in January this are due to play the Glastonbury Festival a few days after their Sunderland show. Sandé's musical breakthrough came in 2011 with the release of her debut album Our Version of topped the UK Albums Chart and become the best-selling album of 2012 in this country with more than a million success led to her performing at both the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2012 Olympics in London, as well as earning her the Critics' Choice Award at the 2012 BRIT Awards and Best British Female Solo Artist in 2013. In 2017 she received an MBE for services to music. Both gigs mark what is set to be a busy year of live music as Sunderland celebrates its new status as an official Music than 500 events are planned from June 2025 to June 2026, spotlighting the city's vibrant music Sandé will play play The Fire Station on 21 June, followed by Franz Ferdinand on 25 June. Follow BBC Sunderland on X, Facebook, Nextdoor and Instagram.
Daily Mail
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Franz Ferdinand announce return to Australia for a major tour in 2025
Franz Ferdinand are set to return Down Under for their first tour since 2018 this November. The indie hitmakers will play their first show in Perth before heading to Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Thirroul in southern NSW. Highlights for the tour include a gig at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Melbourne for the Live at the Gardens concert series and a show on the forecourt of the Sydney Opera House. Formed in Glasgow in 2002, Franz Ferdinand are touring in support of their new hit album The Human Fear. Launching their tour at Perth's Red Hill Auditorium on November 26 the band will then head to Melbourne for their Live in the Gardens show on November 28. The Take Me Out hitmakers will next play at Brisbane's Riverstage on November 29 with a show at the Anita Theatre in Thirroul on December 2. The band finish off their Aussie jaunt with a show on the forecourt of the Sydney Opera House on December 3. The Scots rocker have elected two Australian bands to support their tour Down Under - Teenage Dads from the Mornington Peninsula and Melbourne's Delivery. Famed for their 2004 worldwide hit Take Me Out, which topped Triple J's Top 100 poll. The indie band later went on to score an eye-watering 1 billion streams on Spotify with the catchy tune. Meanwhile, Franz Ferdinand are touring the globe to celebrate their recent comeback as they released their first album in seven years in January The Human Fear. The band, who won a staggering 14 awards in two years feature frontman Alex Kapranos, Audrey Tait, Miaoux Miaoux, Bob Hardy and Dino Bardot. The new album is the first to feature drummer Andy and guitarist Dino and it saw Julian join Kapranos and Bob join in with songwriting. After failing to crack the charts with their early releases it was Take Me Out that catapulted them to fame and bagged 14 awards in just two years. Highlights for the tour include a gig at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Melbourne for the Live at the Gardens concert series and a show on the forecourt of the Sydney Opera House Their accolades include an MTV Video Music Awards for Breakthrough Video, NME Award for the Philip Hall Radar Award and Q Award for Best Video. During this time were also nominated for 13 other awards including the UK Music Video Awards and the iHeartRadio Much Music Video Awards. Since then Franz Ferdinand have had huge success including selling over 10 million albums and 2.5 billion streams. Tickets for their Australian shows go on sale on May 14. Special pre-sale tickets for Frontier Touring Member will also be available from May 12.
Forbes
17-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
NYT ‘Connections' Hints And Answers For Friday, April 18
Find the links between the words to win today's game of Connections. Looking for Thursday's NYT Connections hints, clues and answers instead? You can find them here: Hey there, Connectors (I'm sticking with it)! The weekend is almost upon us. Earlier this week, I went to a Franz Ferdinand show. I've seen them many times over the years and they're always incredibly fun ("Do You Want To" is a better and more danceable song than "Take Me Out," don't @ me). After I saw them in my hometown a certain number of years ago, I posted a tweet about how much I enjoyed the show. The next morning, frontman Alex Kapranos sent me a direct message to tell me he appreciated my praise. I appreciated his appreciation. It was such a nice little gesture. It only took him a few seconds to compose and send, but I still remember it over a decade later. Just like that time Duncan Jones tried to help me figure out screening times for Moon when I wasn't able to do so on my work computer. Going even just a little out of your way to do something that can brighten up a stranger's day can have an immense, positive, long-lasting impact. I'm a Franz Ferdinand fan for life. Before we begin, I've set up a discussion group for NYT Connections and this column on Discord. We have a great little community over there and we chat about more than NYT games. Everyone who has joined has been lovely. It's a fun hangout spot. FEATURED | Frase ByForbes™ Unscramble The Anagram To Reveal The Phrase Pinpoint By Linkedin Guess The Category Queens By Linkedin Crown Each Region Crossclimb By Linkedin Unlock A Trivia Ladder It's also the best way to give me any feedback about the column, especially on the rare(!) occasions that I mess something up since I don't look at the comments or Twitter much. Today's NYT Connections hints and answers for Friday, April 18, are coming right up. Connections is a free, popular New York Times daily word game. You get a new puzzle at midnight every day. You can play on the NYT website or Games app. You're presented with a grid of 16 words. Your task is to arrange them into four groups of four by figuring out the links between them. The groups could be things like items you can click, names for research study participants or words preceded by a body part. There's only one solution for each puzzle, and you'll need to be careful when it comes to words that might fit into more than one category. You can shuffle the words to perhaps help you see links between them. Each group is color coded. The yellow group is usually the easiest to figure out, blue and green fall in the middle, and the purple group is usually the most difficult one. The purple group often involves wordplay. Select four words you think go together and press Submit. If you make a guess and you're incorrect, you'll lose a life. If you're close to having a correct group, you might see a message telling you that you're one word away from getting it right, but you'll still need to figure out which one to swap. If you make four mistakes, it's game over. Let's make sure that doesn't happen with the help of some hints, and, if you're really struggling, today's Connections answers. As with Wordle and other similar games, it's easy to share results with your friends on social media and group chats. If you have an NYT All Access or Games subscription, you can access the publication's Connections archive. This includes every previous game of Connections, so you can go back and play any of those that you have missed. Aside from the first 60 games or so, you should be able to find my hints via Google if you need them! Just click here and add the date of the game for which you need clues or the answers to the search query. Scroll slowly! Just after the hints for each of today's Connections groups, I'll reveal what the groups are without immediately telling you which words go into them. Today's 16 words are... And the hints for today's Connections groups are: Need some extra help? Be warned: we're starting to get into spoiler territory. Today's Connections groups are... Spoiler alert! Don't scroll any further down the page until you're ready to find out today's Connections answers. This is your final warning! Today's Connections answers are... Yet another perfect game brings me up to 52 victories in a row! Let's keep that going. Here's how I fared: 🟩🟩🟩🟩 🟨🟨🟨🟨 🟦🟦🟦🟦 🟪🟪🟪🟪 At first, I thought there might be a group of words with two sets of double letters – POSSESSION, GOODNESS, EFFECT and SHINING – but there were more than four of those on the grid! I also didn't think that we'd have a group of horror movies, since we had one pretty recently that included SHINING, if I recall correctly. But still, I took a stab with that, HAUNTING, EXORCIST and BIRDS. That turned out to be the greens. The yellows then became clear. Oh boy, halfway there! BELONGING and POSSESSION clearly had to go together at that point. GOOD and EFFECT were their obvious partners. I figures that had to be the blues and there was something trickier going on with the other group so I submitted that first. But no, "things you can pick" turned out to be the blues. That's a weirdly easy purple group today. I'm sure, because of that, Saturday's purple group will be something like the first four hieroglyphics on the Rosetta Stone. That's all there is to it for today's Connections clues and answers. Be sure to check my blog tomorrow for hints and the solution for Saturday's game if you need them. P.S. I've loved We Are Scientists for a long time. That first album is fantastic and they've put out some great stuff since then. A buddy of mine sent over their latest song and video, "Please Don't Say It," and needless to say, I'm into this. As tends to be the case with this band, the song is a typically enjoyable slice of indie rock with a fun video. I hope you dig it too: Have a great day! Stay hydrated! Call someone you love! Please follow my blog for more coverage of NYT Connections and other word games, and even some video game news, insights and analysis. It helps me out a lot! Sharing this column with other people who play Connections would be appreciated too. Also, follow me on Bluesky! It's fun there.
