Franz Ferdinand
“No one can stop me!” – Archduke Franz Ferdinand
“*Makes ambiguously homosexual come-on*” – Alex Kapranos
Albums Reviewed:
You Could Have It So Much Better…With Franz Ferdinand
As I
continue in my attempts to alienate every single one of my readers, I present
to you a fully-formed Franz Ferdinand page three days after a full set of
Creedence Clearwater Revival reviews.
Franz is a really coolly-named band from
Lineup! From left to right in the picture above are
guitarist and backing vocalist Nick McCarthy, guitarist and lead singer Alex
Kapranos, bassist Bob Hardy, and drummer Paul Thomson. I have no opinion, musically, on these men
one way or another. They come up with
cool guitar lines and nice drum patterns, but nothing that will knock your
socks off, and it’s the songwriting and general fun the band has that should win you over, including the charming
hipster assdouche vocals that sound much better than Geddy Lee’s.
And, onto the reviews!
Franz Ferdinand (2004)
Rating: 8
Best Song: “Jacqueline”
Sometimes I wish I had the musical exposure of someone like Mark, George, or the Capn, so I could rip apart every new “hip” band to come along and point to some random bootleg from 1976 that they’re ripping off note-for-note and figuring they could do it because no one in their right mind has actually heard of, let alone listened to that shit. But, although I think my musical exposure is pretty decent, compared to the big guns I have about as much of it as Sean Hannity has experience in balanced, objective debate not tainted by “talking points,” so until I rectify this situation I’m just gonna go “these songs sound good, duhhhh” and give out my ratings accordingly. So I like the White Stripes and I like the Hives and I like all those little critical hipster darling assdouche bands to some degree, because I AM a stuck-up hipster critic, also to some degree. I try to deny it, but it’s the inevitable result of spending parts of two years of your life critiquing music for no one’s benefit but your own. And so: this band is very, very fucking good.
They’re
also dorks. But in a good way. Like an ironic hipster way that would piss
the hell out of me if they sucked, but they don’t! So it’s OK.
They named themselves after the Archduke (or something, I’m not a WWI
scholar) of the Austro-Hungarian empire whose assassination led to World War I,
sing in a put-on stuck-up British accent (they’re SCOTTISH!! But they sound like they’re from the
hoity-toity rich area of
And now I’ll actually explain why this is good music, instead of rambling on about unrelated topics for another two paragraphs (god, I’m such a self-referential idiot). Basically, Franz Ferdinand combines jagged and angular (yet cool, catchy, and rocking!) guitar riffs with disco-influenced drum parts (no, I’m serious, listen to the use of that hi-hat), steady basslines, and a faux-pompous British-accented (yet Scottish, remember) singer who comes across like he’s generally too cool for anything and only occasionally stretches out to hit those BIG, ANTHEMIC chorus notes everyone likes to hear. Even though they have about 100 times more rocking power than Joy Division, I often sense the influence of Ian Curtis and friends in some of the tunes, especially “Auf Achse” (yup, more German), with its general lack of a true guitar “riff” (instead going for “texture,” like our depresso-friends). But what’s great about this stuff is how these cool, ironic, hipster assdouche ingredients often combine to produce some wonderfully melodic songs, especially the ubiquitous single “Take Me Out,” the brilliant sing-a-long chorus of “Dark of the Matinee,” and the excellent opener “Jacqueline,” which, after a slow and seemingly unrelated intro, fires off some of the best and most frenetic guitars on the album before kicking into its “that’s why we only work when…we NEEEEED THE MONEEEEYYYYY!!!!” chorus, which is fucking awesome.
“Tell Her Tonight” and “Cheating on You” are probably the album’s most underdeveloped songs and definite weak links, but this 39-minute piece of plastic gives you a more or less consistent listen all the way through. “This Fire” probably isn’t as interesting as some of the others, but provides another great sing-a-long chorus (perhaps that’s why it’s the 2nd single!), the aforementioned, Joy Division-esque “Auf Achse” is great, the also aforementioned German singing in “Darts of Pleasure” is a hoot (and so is the organ that comes in during the German lyrics!), and there’s absolutely no reason to spit anywhere near “Michael,” “Come on Home” or “40’.” There’s not a ton of variety here, and the general description I gave you last in the last paragraph pretty much holds true for everything (no power ballads or 9-minute progressive thrash metal epics, for some reason), but, to me, it’s a great, interesting style, and it’s made better by the quality of compositions contained herein. The band’s ironic hipster assdouche appearance and schtick makes it seem to me like they might be a here-today, gone-tomorrow thing, just because people are gonna get annoyed with a bunch of dorky, ironic Scottish guys who look like Kraftwerk singing about factories in German after a little while. Not because of the quality of music, in any case. And that’d be a shame! Because I really, truly like this band. I usually have to go through an acclimation period with all these damn “cool” bands, because I so desperately want to not be a stuck-up hipster critic, before I eventually cave. Not so these guys! I liked them right away! Liked “Take Me Out!” Saw them ROCK THE HOUSE on Conan! Definitely dug them from the start. And with good reason. Very good band! Fucking ironic dorks. But very good band.
Oh, and this record is better than every U2 album ever released except The Joshua Tree, by the way. Just wanted to make sure everyone knows that. “Vertigo” is starting to annoy the living hell out of me after seeing that damn iPod commercial 8,000 times. God, those guys are whores. Remember my warning at the end of the U2 page! U2’s ego is puffed-up enough right now that they’re ripe for another fall into ludicrousness. When I get my hands on their new album I’ll review it posthaste, but until then, color me pessimistic (note: I was dead wrong about the album, but I still like this one more).
Wait…why the hell did I just end a Franz Ferdinand review with a discussion of U2?
You Could Have It So Much Better…With Franz
Ferdinand (2005)
Rating: 8
Best Song: “Do You
Want To?”
More of a grower, this one is, and you can probably throw that mildly idiotic Joy Division comparison I tossed out on the last album because I had just reviewed them. While the debut was immediately pleasing, catchy, fun, etc., this one is just as pleasing, catchy, fun, etc. as the first, only not as immediate. Why? Well, it’s thicker, I guess. Or something. What you saw on the first album was pretty much what you got, plus a whole bunch of the songs were totally kick-ass and supremely melodic. I’m gonna go ahead and admit that this album, on a pure song-by-song basis, is probably not as well-written as its predecessor. However, as one discovers from repeated listens, it’s also a lot more diverse, detailed, hard-rocking, and interesting from top to bottom. Sure, I still like the debut a teeny-tiny bit more because I’m a sucker for retarted catchy songs like “Take Me Out” and “Jacqueline,” but, although I wasn’t all that sure about this album when I first popped it in, I can safely say our favorite assassinated Austro-Hungarian archduke has put forth a product worthy of the phrase “smarmy, winking faux-new wave with cool guitar hooks.”
OK, so, like I said, the easy-to-define “influences” and “sound” of the debut, with its funky disco drum patterns, steady basslines, and chimey, angular guitar riffs, are not really there anymore. Sure, there are funky disco drum patterns, steady basslines, and chimey, angular guitar riffs, but there’s also harmonies and ballads and keyboards pseudo-metallic guitars and songs that have like eight different sections for you to try to get your head around. And it sounds as much like Joy Division as Stevie Wonder, but that was just my retarted head and its obsession with whatever band I had just been listening to a lot (now watch out for a totally out of place Bob Dylan or Gentle Giant comparison…trust me, folks, I’m fully capable of such things). And it starts off great! The main flaw with the endlessly imaginative opener “The Fallen” is that Kapranos’ vocal lines try to stuff like 50 words into a four-note vocal phrase and end up sounding like the more ridiculous moments of The Who By Numbers (except NOT…AT ALL, because this is a faux-new wave angular guitar disco-rock song that sounds nothing like that album at all, and I need to stop being a moron), but oh boy do I like the structure. The intro is genius, the “what’s wrong with a little destruction?” line over the super guitar line is ace, and the totally out-of-place happy pop “la la la!” part is wonderful. Of similar interestingness is the opening single and surely the most stupidly catchy song Franz has ever penned, “Do You Want to?” and its moronic yet awesome “doo doo!” vocal/synth line after the total sixties pop intro that sounds like the goddamn Kinks (that’s even mixed in MONO!!!! Hee!).
Ofcourse, these are the songs you’ll love immediately upon popping this bad boy in. That’s why they’re placed first, doncha know! But while the melodies might not be as immediately catchy (as I have now said 800 times), the musical ideas on display make up for it! Witness the Minutemen-short “This Boy,” whose contrast between wonderfully pretty “ahhhhh!!!!” parts and herky-jerky keyboard-stabbed “I WANNA CAR! I WANNA CAR! YEAH!” parts is something to behold indeed. And while “Franz Ferdinand” and “balladry” may not be two things you normally associate with each other, I am here to tell you that the boys succeed, to varying degrees, in all three of their stabs at softening things up (perhaps because their natural *wink, wink* tongue-in-cheek precludes any of these songs from being taken too seriously). “Walk Away” is the only one that contains a normal rhythm section, and this all-too-obvious eighties tribute glides by very nicely on lightly strummed acoustics, harmonies, and well-placed low-pitched electric stabs. “Eleanor Put Your Boots On” is all pseudo-falsetto vocals and mildly sloppy piano underpinned by yet more sensitively strummed acoustics and quite tasty, and while “Fade Together” is a little herky-jerky for my taste (stops and starts too much), it’s a very interesting little ditty. Didn’t think Franz would be able to pull this stuff off, no sir.
Most of the remaining pleasures you’ll find, bar possibly the super-fast super-fun “Evil and a Heathen,” are through the magic of Franz’s tasty guitar lines, because the remaining half of the songs, while very nice, are melodically somewhat rote (and are also so in the drum department. Halfway through it seems like the drummer just starts playing the same rhythm in every damn song). The verses in “What You Meant” provide some lovely examples of delicate acoustic picking, while the energetic riff underlying the chorus should get your butt shaking quite nicely. While much of “I’m Your Villain” ain’t all that much to look at, the violent riffage and overlapping “see you later!” yells in the last minute are ace, and so is the metal-god guitar solo. The closing “Outsiders” has this bitchin’ two-guitar part at the beginning with one in each speaker that is just genius, and while the title track basically sucks balls and is definitely the worst song on the album, it too has a section during the bridge or some crap where the indie chimey guitars play a wonderful chord sequence before going back to the suck.
In short, as I’ve said far too times by now, lower-quality batch of songs, but more diversity and musical goodies mean another very good album, if not quite as good as the first. I’m also pissed off they’ve stopped singing in German, but eh. Not quite so big a deal. The German did sound pretty bad-ass, though.
That’s
why we only work when…we NEEEEEEEEED THE MONEEEEEEEEEEEEY!