Franz Ferdinand's Night Moves

The breakthrough came with "Ulysses," which opens the album and is the first single. The song began as a Kapranos melody, which he hastily titled "Ulysses" because he happened to glance at a copy of James Joyce's masterpiece on his bookshelf. ("If I had a song idea right now, I'd call it 'Paper Cup,'" he explains, looking at the paper cup in front of him.) But something about the impromptu title inspired Kapranos to flesh out the song. "Not the Joyce thing but the Greek story," he says. Instead of losing his geographical bearings, as Ulysses does in Homer's text, the protagonist in Franz's version loses himself in a haze of weed.

"It's about cannabis," Kapranos says, addressing the song's central lyric, "C'mon, let's get high." The result — which features a jarring dub-reggae groove, and verses and choruses written in different keys — is an unlikely pop gem. Kapranos avoids discussing any direct inspiration he may have taken from drugs ("My mother might read this"), but it's pretty clear that behind the doors of the former rehab facility, his band wasn't just conducting musical experiments. "Occasionally it's fun for writing and certain things in the studio," he says, without specifying his poison. "It's good to have that influence on your music."

The rehearsal space has three floors, and Tonight co-producer Dan Carey, who's worked with Hot Chip and Lily Allen, encouraged the band to use each of them for the unique acoustics. "Recording in the cellar was the most fun," Kapranos says of the echo-heavy space, which worked perfectly for Tonight's heavier sounds, like the punk-feedback blast of "What She Came For."

Kapranos recorded his vocals in the main hall, taking advantage of its "atmospheric reverberance." And the album's most intimate moments, like the acoustic closer, "Katherine Kiss Me," were muted by the hanging fabrics and thick carpets of the upstairs office. Carey also encouraged Franz to follow through with their most harebrained sonic experiments, including one that seems way more black metal than hipster rock: The percussive tap on the chorus of "No You Girls" is the sound of a human femur hitting a pelvis. (McCarthy bought the skeleton at an auction last year.) On another track, the team created a swooshing sound by hanging a mike from the ceiling and swinging it around a vertically positioned guitar amp. "Maybe it's self-indulgent," Kapranos admits. "But it was a lot of fun."

Several songs touch on obsession, a theme Kapranos came to understand when a stalker appeared in his life. "I don't want to encourage her anymore — it was really unpleasant and a disgustingly gross invasion of privacy," he says. "I do find the idea of obsession fascinating, though. Uncontrollable obsession is at the heart of so much romance, and the way we behave when we're in love is completely illogical, isn't it?"