CROWING a year which saw a triumphal reboot with their euphoric, dance-influenced album Always Ascending, Franz Ferdinand headline the Concert in the Gardens at Edinburgh’s Hogmanay. With new guitarist Dino Bardot and Julian Corrie AKA dance artist Miaoux Miaoux on keyboards and synths, it’s the first time the world-beating band have played the celebration after their scheduled support of Erasure at Hogmanay 2003 was abandoned due to ferocious storms.

“We were so excited to be asked,” frontman Alex Kapranos recalls of the date 15 years ago. “We were just starting out as a band and it was a big deal for us, a really big deal.

“We hadn’t had an album out or anything. We were supposed to be opening up and then The Coral were up, they had just had a big hit at that time and were doing really well. Erasure were headlining and I love Erasure, so musically I was looking forward to it, never mind the idea of playing Hogmanay, the greatest night of the year, and doing it in Scotland.”

The band’s mood changed when rains and heavy winds started hammering Edinburgh – and wouldn’t stop. But rather than sink into despondency, the band – which featured guitarist Nick McCarthy until 2016 when he left to start his own projects – were determined to still see in 2004 with a smile.

“We were like: ‘Sod this! If we can’t play the gardens, we’re still going to make damn sure we have a bloody good time,’” says Kapranos, who asked his sister and her fellow student friends where they could find a good party. Bundling their gear into their van, they headed to a flat in Marchmont, south of the Meadows.

“Maybe in the last 15 years Marchmont has become a bit more chi-chi, but then there were these grand Victorian flats that were a wee bit beaten up and with plenty of space – great for a gig,” he continues. “So we turned up and played there instead as the bells were going into 2004. It turned out to be an amazing night – not the amazing night we had expected playing in front of thousands of people – it was very raucous and a good laugh.”

Fifteen years and a string of massive hit albums later, Kapranos says he’s delighted the band is finally getting to play the Princes Street Gardens party, which also features Mercury-nominated Devon quartet Metronomy and Free Love, the latest incarnation of Suzanne Rodden and Lewis Cook. It’s an inspired, defiantly optimistic line-up for saying goodbye to a year some think can’t end fast enough.

Friends since Metronomy’s eccentric early days, Kapranos and co have played gigs with them before.

“You know when you see a band for the first time and you think there’s something really magical about them?” he says. “That was really early on, a gig at King Tut’s. They were a three-piece then, I think, and were on stage with these lights that you pick up at the 99p shop hanging all over the place.

“It’s been incredible watching their career over the years. They have this wonderful uplifting sound to their music, which I think is going to be perfect for that night, and also with what we’re doing.”

Bring their Utopian dance pop to the same slot Franz Ferdinand were scheduled for in 2003 is Free Love (below), the charismatic Scottish duo formerly known as Happy Meals.

“Well ... what a great band they are, what can I say?” says Kapranos. “History goes in cycles and it’s really cool to have a band like Free Love on the line-up, in the position that we were in all those years ago.”

Free Love meet the high expectations the frontman has for Scottish music; expectations confirmed by the recent Rip It Up exhibition of pop memorabilia.

“I think that’s the first time that I’ve ever seen something as extensive as that since Luke Fowler’s exhibition at the Lighthouse about 15 years ago,” he says. “You have everything together in one room and you really get this overview of how rich the history of Scottish music is, and how it continues to be as well. I really feel that.”

Kapranos continues: “I’m more in touch with what’s happening in Glasgow, and Glasgow seems to be having this really productive time in terms of music. I do expect there to be great things coming out of Scotland and to be surprised and entertained by it, and the ideas of the next generation.

“Happy Meals are doing that for me, they are meeting my high expectations. And the nature of what they’re doing is too. I think all the bands that are on that line-up, we all know how to bring on the party. It’s going to be a proper celebration.”

Dec 31, Princes Street Gardens, Edinburgh, 8pm, enclosure £75(+bf), gardens £65(+bf). www.edinburghshogmanay.com/whats-on/concert-in-the-gardens