Franz Ferdinand? Not Tonight (album review)
Image courtsey of Epic/Domino Records
Artem Altman
Co Editor-in-Chief
Five years might seem like a good time to try new things. With already two acclaimed albums behind them, Franz Ferdinand fails to deliver on the promise of great things with their new release Tonight: Franz Ferdinand.
Five years might seem like enough time, but with a product the likes of Tonight, Franz Ferdinand might want to forget what just happened and move on to the next album. It took three years to release this one, and the hope is that in all that time FF also wrote enough material for a second album that they are now about to release - an album that doesn’t discard the band’s creative capacity.
On Tonight the Scottish quartet departs from the potent indie-rock sound for which they’re known and venture into pop-disco exploration, a move that no one could have possibly predicted after their formative firsts: self-titled debut, Franz Ferdinand (2004) followed by You Could Have It So Much Better (2005). Tonight is likely to alienate some fans with its synth-pop sound, but this is something that should be expected with such a quirky album.
“Ulysses” is a comatose telling of a drug-induced state. “Can’t Stop the Feeling” could be a bastard child of Madonna that you can almost imagine being played at a 80s club. “Katharine Kiss Me” is reminiscent of “Eleanor Put Your Boots On” with its acoustic arrangement. “No You Girls” starts with an intro eerily reminiscent of Desireless’ “Voyage Voyage.”
“Live Alone,” is an ABBA-esque, creepy song about the joy of loneliness (“I wanna live alone/ I could be happy on my own”). With “Turn It On,” the band follows that theme but with a seemingly lazy search for a different rhyme scheme (“I’ll never be alone, yeah/I followed you to Rome”).
“What She Came” is probably the closest that the band comes to sounding like pure Franz Ferdinand. However, they then follow it up with “Lucid Dreams,” an unnecessarily long and sleazy track that tries to go somewhere but really ends up going nowhere.
Somewhere in the middle Tonight heads into a certain direction, but then things just fall apart and the tediousness of the music turns the FF ship on an opposite and ultimately unfulfilling course.
Overall, and this can’t be understated, Tonight is a let down when compared to the kind of music for which Franz Ferdinand is known. A product of uninspired songwriting, Tonight moves far into the uncertain future, leaving us to wonder what direction will Franz Ferdinand go next?
Can Franz Ferdinand possibly pick themselves up after falling down so hard? Possibly. One thing is for sure: they could make their music so much better.
