![]() The second one is the renaissance of vinyl. KAPRANOS: I have a number of reasons why I like the idea of greatest hits albums and why I think they’re still relevant. How do you feel about the potential obsolescence of greatest hits albums in the streaming age? So we were like, “Well, let’s have a listen to it.” When we went back to the actual core pop song of it, we were like, “This is pretty fun! It’s really fun to play.” HARDY: Over the years, people have said, “How come you don’t play ‘Lucid Dreams’?” I think the version we were playing, the album version, we really didn’t feel it when we were doing it live in the last nine years. KAPRANOS: I was like, “Maybe we should listen to that song again.” It’s funny because you go back and listen to it and go, “Oh yeah, that’s pretty good.” ![]() HARDY: We were in the dressing room, and the venue staff were clearing up, and he was by himself with all the plastic cups, going “LUCID DREAMS!” The following day, we learned how to play it. Between every song, he was banging on the stage, going “LUCID DREAMS! LUCID DREAMS!” And then when we finished the set, he was still banging on the stage. When we started touring Always Ascending, just before the album came out, we played a gig in Vancouver, and there was some guy down in the front. KAPRANOS: I remember why we put it in the set, as well. The version we chose was the original version that we put out before the album Tonight. HARDY: Recently, we put it back into the set after quite a few years of not playing it. KAPRANOS: That’s the way we play it live. With “Lucid Dreams,” you went with the non-album version, the Mike Fraser mix. KAPRANOS: And you just know which ones are the bangers, so stick them on! Because we tour so much, that’s informed how we perceive our back catalog and which songs are our favorites. There were other singles, like “Bullet” and “Fresh Strawberries.” So maybe if we’d done it a couple of years ago, they would have been on there, as well.īOB HARDY: I guess it was informed by songs that we included at festival sets and still play live. There were a few that we were like, “Maybe we should put that on,” but, again, there wasn’t space. KAPRANOS: It was kind of obvious for the most part, the songs that were going to go on it. In terms of having enough space to include all these songs, was that a determining factor in trying to figure out what songs to include and what songs to exclude? We’ve been speaking to Domino for a long time about it, and it feels like a good thing to do. Any more and you would run out of space, so it seemed like the right time to do it. It’s something we’ve been talking about for quite a while, but we couldn’t make it too long, just in terms of how many songs you could fit on two LPs. Why did you feel that now was the right time to make this greatest hits compilation?ĪLEX KAPRANOS: It just felt right. Below, you can read our conversation with them. We caught up with Kapranos and Hardy over Zoom to discuss Hits To The Head, their feelings about greatest hits records in the streaming age, how they represented particular albums in this compilation, how the pair of new songs on the album reflect the band’s future direction, and more. ![]() ![]() That reminded me, like, ‘There’s some good stuff here! This is quite good!'” That was the first time I had sat down and listened to some of the records from start to finish since we’d made them. “I forget all of the records, but we did it with Tonight. “Over the pandemic, when we were locked down for so long, there were a few occasions where we’d listen to albums with fans online,” Hardy said. It was the first time I had actually listened closely to those recordings in quite a while.”īassist Bob Hardy echoed this sentiment and explained that, in a peculiar way, it renewed faith in the band. Then you just walk out as quickly as possible. “I presume it’s the same for most musicians, but when I make a record, when it’s done, I never listen to it again, unless it comes on in a café or a shop. “It was really interesting compiling the record because you have to listen to it a lot to master it,” vocalist-guitarist Alex Kapranos said.
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