"The Dark of the Matinée" (also known simply as "Matinée") is a song by Scottish indie rock band Franz Ferdinand. It was released as the third single from their eponymous debut studio album on 19 April 2004. The song reached number eight in the UK Singles Chart. In Australia, the song was ranked #50 on Triple J's Hottest 100 of 2004.

The song is about walking home from Bearsden Academy fantasizing about a better life in the future, telling Terry Wogan about it on UK national television, then being shaken from the fantasy as its own ridiculousness shatters its very existence. The chorus and title started off from a mail conversation with Bob Hardy where he suggested the dark of a matinée performance was a utopian environment.

The video features the band dressed as schoolboys, dancing in an automatic, almost possessed, fashion and miming along to the main vocal track. It was inspired by Dennis Potter's television play Blue Remembered Hills (1979), which features adults playing children, and the lip-sync device Potter used in his 'serials with songs' Pennies from Heaven (1978) and The Singing Detective (1986). The finale of the video also takes several visual cues from the "Dry Bones" sequence in Singing Detective. Kapranos wanted to shoot the video in the corridors of Bearsden Academy and approached the school who, while initially receptive, ultimately rejected the idea, as the idea of schoolboys in their early 30s was too reminiscent of the recent scandal involving Brian MacKinnon.

All lead vocals performed by Alex Kapranos.

CD1

...
Wikipedia