Monday 20 April 2009

Franz Ferdinand - Tonight: Franz Ferdinand

Innovative return for British indie leaders

The “difficult third album”: an infamous rock cliché, never more true than for Franz Ferdinand. Four years after You Could Have It So Much Better, and almost eighteen-months after re-entering the studios, Tonight: Franz Ferdinand finds a more inventive and less-formulaic band than the Britpop revivalist leaders of previous offerings.

Despite a more evolved sound, though, it would be misleading claim a massive sonic departure has taken place while the band have been away. Lead-single ‘Ulysses’ picks up from the gender-bending seduction of the debut-album’s ‘Michael’, with Kapranos’ half-whispered, half-desperate vocal delivery at perfect ease with disco-guitar instrumentation. The later ‘Can’t Stop Feeling’, meanwhile, sits comfortably alongside ‘Take Me Out’ as owner of FF’s most infectious riff. It certainly isn’t just standard Franz Ferdinand fare here, though: ‘No You Girls’, is driven by a sound so reminiscent of David Bowie’s ‘DJ’ as to demand direct comparison, while the opening of ‘Dream Again’ could easily be his ‘Warszawa’. Indeed much of the album carries a watermark of Berlin-era Bowie, breeding the same combination of dance floor friendly pop riffs and darker lyrical matter. “Heroes” after the wall came down, perhaps.

There is, though, one track which entirely and utterly dominates Tonight: Franz Ferdinand. Clocking in at just shy of 8 minutes, and just under a fifth of the entire album’s running time, ‘Lucid Dreams’ is perhaps the furthest from their comfort zone that the band have ever been. From nowhere, after 4 minutes of sonically intensive indie rock, suddenly a full-on acid house breakdown gatecrashes the party. All heavy drumbeats, crashing percussion rhythms and schizophrenic electro riffs, this wouldn’t feel out of place in a Simian Mobile Disco setlist. And it completely and utterly works. Coming out of a spin of Tonight:…, there’s only one track you’ll remember. The black hole in the centre of the album, devouring the entirety of the energy from around it. If ever there were a suspicion that Franz Ferdinand had a defined sound that they were incapable of diverting from, then this track is the entire case for the defence.

Tonight: Franz Ferdinand? Tonight: Lucid Dreams, thanks very much.

C.S.

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