In August 2018, Scottish indie-rock band Franz Ferdinand—whose album Always Ascending (2018), their first in four years, heralded a return to 2000s danceable riffs echoing Talking Heads and Joy Division—delivered an energetic set at Chicago Theatre, the 1921-opened historic hall as an opera house and American rock bastion with 3,600 seats. The hour-long performance, captured in high quality, mirrored the tour's nascent phase, where Nick McCarthy's guitar textures intertwined with Alex Kapranos' charisma to contrast garage drive with melancholic bridges before a sold-out crowd. As part of their American breakthrough, this show highlighted Franz Ferdinand's role in reviving British post-punk, where festival groove gained theatrical scale.