As manifestos go, "You are the latest contender, you are the one to remember/ I want this fantastic passion", is pretty hard to resist.
Franz Ferdinand are four young men from Glasgow (actually, Munich via Glasgow, in the case of guitarist Nick McCarthy), who have made the most thrilling debut single since the Strokes' The Modern Age.
Darts of Pleasure isn't released until September but, playing their biggest London show to date, the band are already drawing a sizable crowd. Playing R&B, Tainted Love and the alien electro-disco of Gina X Performance's classic No GDM, the warm-up DJ's message is clear: this is pop music.
That's what makes Franz Ferdinand so exciting. They are probably the only British band capable of pulling off the same trick as the Strokes in taking edgy, sexy, kinetic pop music into the mainstream: essentially, by being proper, old-fashioned pop stars.
Certainly they have the looks. Singer Alex Kapranos (blond, a little foppish) cuts an elegant figure, and McCarthy (dark, twinkly, puckish) is the perfect foil. They are often reminiscent of Scottish post-punk band Josef K: their songs rattle and pulse with wilful eccentricity and irresistible pop.
Josef K loved Chic and wanted to sound like them. They didn't, of course: their songs gave the libidinous impulse of disco and funk a wired, nervy tension. Franz Ferdinand write great songs about the simplest yet most crucial things: will I see her tonight? How will I tell her what I feel?
It is hard not to imagine the disco chant of Take Me Out or Tell Her Tonight, with their so-cheesy-they're-cool call-and-response vocals, becoming instant pop classics.
Then there's Shopping for Blood, a rollicking oddity that sounds not unlike the Fall doing glam rock, Kapranos announcing, "I am the new Scottish gentry", which, under the circumstances, seems entirely reasonable.
Darts of Pleasure is a perfect tumult of new-wave cool, a vicious, delicious riff and roving elastic bass. If their swift rise has left them a little nervous, and, consequently, a little ragged, it will pass. Franz Ferdinand are a band to remember.
