Are we out of love with Franz Ferdinand? “You’re very quiet,” suggested singer and chief cheekbones Alex Kapranos at the Scottish band’s comeback London club show. “It’s like meeting up with an ex.”

In pop terms, three years of silence feels about as long as Franz Ferdinand’s Archduke namesake has been gone. When they first emerged to fill the gap in our affections after The Strokes and before Arctic Monkeys, their hip-swivelling punk-funk seemed like something that could last.

But in their absence they’ve been burned by a failed dalliance with Girls Aloud producers Xenomania, we’ve been seeing other people too, and their tight shirts and tidy haircuts may not have the allure of old. Can this still be a match made in Heaven? Kapranos certainly worked hard to rekindle this old flame, abandoning his louche stand-offishness to pirouette about the stage, at one point playing his guitar behind his head and possibly even breaking sweat.

Fellow songwriter Nick McCarthy was equally busy, zipping between guitar and keyboards to fill out a sound that had a few new elements, but was far from the radical departure hinted at by the band while recording next week’s third album, Tonight: Franz Ferdinand.

Send Him Away had a snaking guitar line inspired by their work with Damon Albarn’s Africa Express project. New single Ulysses was dominated by crunching synths and plenty of la-la-la-ing to go with the do-do-dos of past hit Do You Want To.

They originally went against the prevailing macho indie rock wind by professing a desire to make music for girls to dance to. Another new track, Live Alone, came closer to achieving that objective than ever, a twirling disco number that recalled both Blondie and Abba.

Nothing matched the thrilling gear change of classic first hit Take Me Out, the one song that will undoubtedly still be heard long after the quartet can no longer fit into those trousers.

But other tracks showed they haven’t lost that knack for an exhilarating mid-song about-turn. What She Came For began as squelchy funk and ended as a clattering guitar frenzy. No You Girls switched briefly from bouncy catchiness to down-tempo falsetto weirdness.

As white balloons descended during encore This Fire and the band embraced and fired streamer cannon, they seemed to have done everything possible to banish accusations of coldness.

They’re back and they’ve changed, but not too much. It’s time to give them another chance.

Apollo Hammersmith, 9 March (0870 400 0700).
www.hammersmithapollo.ne