Tonight: Franz Ferdinand is the third album by Scottish rock group Franz Ferdinand. It was released through Domino Records on 26 January 2009 in the UK. “Ulysses” was released on the 19 January 2009 as the first single and is available for streaming on the band’s MySpace page. It is a concept album loosely based around a night of partying and the morning effects after.

Although having written about eight songs while on tour in 2005, Alex Kapranos decided to write new tunes because he wanted the album to be “…quite new, to be quite different sounding from everything we’ve ever done before.”Despite having recorded their sophomore album in a blitz, Kapranos stressed that the band wanted to take their time. He voices, “This time we wanted to spend more time developing, and also, I suppose, allowing songs and sounds to evolve more before we ended up writing an album, and absorbing more music and ideas and, I suppose, life itself. And when I say life, I mean life off the road, because I wouldn’t classify life on the road as real life.”Franz Ferdinand began working on their third studio album in early 2007. Franz Ferdinand was supposed to record the album with producer Brian Higgins, yet in March 2008, the two entities parted ways. The drummer, Paul Thomson, says “We wrote with Higgins for a while and initially we thought we’d work more with him but it didn’t really work out. We just realized that we’re not really a pop group.” However, they also commented they have not given up on the pop concept. Some songs of the album were written and recorded in the old town hall of Govan, Scotland. The band first moved in, following a year of touring in support of their second album and mostly used it for storing and rehearsing.

The album has reportedly been inspired by the “heavy dub sound of Jamaican reggae stars.” Alex Kapranos also stated the album has a “streak of electronica” but is still a mix of influences. He also commented it has “..the heavy bass and space echo you would find on a dub mix.” In a Rolling Stone interview, Kapranos stated the album is more of a dance than a rock record. In an
interview
with Billboard.com,
Kapranos said “It’s
the opposite
of punk/pop, which
took something that was
wonderful and removed all the dirt.”In an interview with Billboard.com, Kapranos said “It’s the opposite of punk/pop, which took something that was wonderful and removed all the dirt.” He also said the band is using Russian Polyvox synthesizers. The album has somewhat of an African influence according to an XFM article in which Alex reeled, “We’re one of these bands that are always gonna sound the same no matter what we do, but there are other influences there. I guess the drums are a little different, Paul has been listening to a lot of African stuff so that’s gonna come through.” The song “No You Girls” uses a human skeleton for percussion. “Tonight is more of a concept album that explores the highs and lows associated with an evening of debauchery. This album covers all its bases from the initial excitement of the early evening to the numbness of the morning after”, writes one reviewer. The artwork for the album is a photograph taken by Søren Solkær Starbird just after midnight behind the Barrowlands Ballroom in Glasgow. Talking to NME, drummer Paul Thomson said, “We wanted to get a Weegee vibe – that famous New York crime scene photographer from the ’40s and ’50s.” Subsequently, it is part of a series where the band are taking photos with photographers in different cities they end up in. On the band’s blog, they mention the series of photos as ‘imaginary crime scenes, invaded by the photographer’, and ‘a slice of night frozen by flash’. It was announced on September 20th, 2008 that they had finished work on the album but still had no title for it. On October 7th 2008, reporter Michael Hogan from Vanity Fair interviewed Alex and Paul, who confirmed the title of their third album to be Tonight: Franz Ferdinand, with NME reporting the album’s amended title and release date a week later.