SOMETIMES it’s the little details which are important in making a record.

“The studio we chose only had one sofa in the mixing room,” says Franz Ferdinand drummer Paul Thomson. “It meant it was very uncomfortable and simple.

“We didn’t want to sit in the studio for a year which is what we did with the last record.”

Instead Franz Ferdinand’s fourth album Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action was born from a series of sessions spread out over the past three years.

He’s now looking forward to playing live again.

“When we started Franz Ferdinand we had never done a proper tour before,” he says, talking of how the band built up an impressive live pedigree in their early years, moving from support slots to selling out the Alexandra Palace in just two years.

“We wanted to do as many shows as we could, because the alternative was being at home and being unemployed – I’d done eight years of that.

“It got to the point for the sake of our mental health and the band we should stop doing shows and focus on writing our own things.

“I’m looking forward to playing again – we’ve been having ideas about the set design and costumes.”

The exuberant record they are now touring is the first from the Glasgow band since 2009’s Tonight.

They seem to have rediscovered the imagination, vitality and fun found on their classic, era-encapsulating debut Franz Ferdinand and appear at 02 Guildhall Southampton on Wednesday.