Franz Ferdinand and Sparks join forces for album and tour

Musicians often say they admire each other's work, but few ever do anything about it.

At least not to the extent that Scottish rock group Franz Ferdinand and long-running Los Angeles experimental pop duo Sparks have gone with their mutual admiration society.

The bands that span two generations and two continents have just released , a full album of songs written and recorded together after more than a decade of appreciating each other's music from afar.

They're also about to launch a major European tour with plans for a slate of US dates in autumn to showcase the marriage of each group's idiosyncratic pop music, which plays out in lively and provocative ways across the album's spunky, dance floor-friendly songs.

There's also something perversely intriguing about a project that began more than a decade ago with a song called and culminates in an epic centrepiece titled .

"Both bands have a real respect for each other's music," says Sparks keyboardist and songwriter Ron Mael. "There's kind of a shared idea of ambition and a love of the form of pop music and trying to have that be expanded as much as possible within the constraints of it."