Franz Ferdinand

written January 2004

Franz Ferdinand CD/LP (Domino Records)

Franz Ferdinand is big in Britain. Their aim is "to make music that girls can dance to" and to infiltrate history, replacing Franz Ferdinand the man with Franz Ferdinand the entity. Let's see-- an Austrio-Hungarian crown prince whose major achievement was sparking WWI and has since been pushing up daisies, or a Glaswegian band that writes catchy pop songs at once bouncy and dark? No contest, especially considering most youths these days think Leonardo, Michaelangelo, Donatello and Raphael are ninja turtles. So there's a big chance Franz Ferdinand will get their second wish. The first, done already.

In case it's a mystery why they're the Next Big Thing in the U.K. (the NNWONW* perhaps?), it could be because the album sounds a lot like the best of Britpop 1978-95. Each song is faintly yet instantly recognizable with a wealth of influences. But just as you're ready to declare they're the new Strokes if disco Blondie backed and Stevie Wonder circa "Part-Time Lover" collaborated with Madness to write while Ian Curtis made the arrangements and Chic freaked with them, the songs shift again. It's like watching clouds change shape with each gust of wind except grass is something you smoke, hooks are something you shag, Iggy loves Ziggy, Justine Frischmann digs Neil Hannon, and everyone's one happy family.

Boys, your hair is beautiful. Now come and dance with me.

(For further listening, try 'Words so Leisured', on the Take Me Out EP, a slowed down version of 'Darts of Pleasure' that could out-Cave Nick in a heartbeat, though noone dies in the end.)

* NWONW, the New Wave of the New Wave, was a designation given by NME to mid-nineties post-punk bands e.g. Blur, Elastica, These Animal Men.

Rufus Wainwright

written February 2004

Want One (Dreamworks Records)

His are not the top 40 songs you'd bop along to sitting in traffic below blue skies lined with palm trees, nor tender guitar melodies of night underneath a pink moon. They are songs of love and loss, of self-doubt and learning to let go of that doubt, of living life despite your fears.They're songs that wouldn't feel out of place in a dark cabaret filled with revelers, but in the end that speak to each person alone as the light glimmers on each face only to vanish back into the smoke.

Rufus Wainwright has a lovely voice that can as easily soar as whisper, whether accompanied by just a simple piano, a guitar strum, or a full orchestra, choir, and elaborate arrangements. The power of the songs come not from the formal stylings but the emotional openness of his lyrics strengthened by classical arrangements that turn out wistful, serene, passionate, and ultimately hopeful.

Forget "gay hell and back," as Rufus commented in the now infamous NYT interview. This is the story of Orpheus returning from the underworld unable to bring back his beloved, but instead of resigning himself, changing his fate, deciding to live to tell us about it all-- singing us of the pain and beauty of love in a world where men read fashion magazines, blank cellphone screens betray no missed calls and youth is an elusive commodity. "Woke up this morning at 11:11/ Wasn't in Portland and I wasn't in heaven/ Could have been either by the way I was feeling/ But I was alive, I was alive" he muses, and you wanna take him up on it when he says "so patch up your bleeding hearts" and invites you to live out your life truthfully, accepting whatever comes your way with emotion, opening yourself up to change, hope, and perhaps, love, the ever elusive.

© 2004 Melis Alemdar. Comments? Email me.

/End cd reviews part one.