Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action is the fourth studio album by Scottish group Franz Ferdinand, released through Domino Records on 26 August 2013 in the UK, and on 27 August 2013 in the US. The album received generally favorable reviews from music critics. On 1 September 2013, it debuted at No. 6 in the UK Albums Chart and at No. 1 on the UK Indie Chart. The band previewed many of their new tracks at live performances over 2012 and 2013. The album was recorded during 2013 at Alex Kapranos' Scottish studio and Nick McCarthy's Sausage Studios in London. Kapranos described the album direction as "forward" and revealed that the band decided to keep a low profile about things as their last album was "tainted" by misinformation prior to its release. Kapranos said that the album deals with "the idea of the cynic's search for optimism and the sceptic's search for a manual crop up here and there. I've always liked the lead character in Alasdair Gray's Lanark growing the hard scales to defend the soft inner-self from the world. Socially awkward asthmatic with a self-consuming imagination. My 19-year-old self was electrified. Maybe the album is about how to shed those scales."