By Elliot Boswell
How should we approach Franz Ferdinand? In frontman Alex Kapranos' own words:
"It's always pop. Franz Ferdinand has always been pop."
"We just realized that we're not really a pop group."
What accounts for their more recent disillusionment with the pop form? We can only speculate, really, but there are a few potential explanations. The first is their lack of a movement; or more specifically, their lack of true peers. Franz always wore the robe of "post-punk revival" uneasily, for they're too listenable and not iconoclastic enough to be the heirs of post-punk forbears like Magazine or even their Scottish brethren Orange Juice, yet too smart and not self-regarding enough to be lumped in with other revivalists like Bloc Party or The Bravery.
Neither does the Britpop (or "Scotpop") label stick, for as well as Kapranos channels Jarvis Cocker's sexual menace and Blur's art-rock aesthetic, Franz seem to reject the idea of the communal that has arguably become the defining feature of the movement's retrospectives, as well having a general disinterest in the class conflict that makes Britpop itself remain so compelling. Whereas Supergrass sang, "We are young, we are green/... See our friends, see the sights, feel alright" and Oasis beat its chest to the tune of "If you don't get yours, I won't get mine as well," if our four rakish Glaswegians "have one principle/Then it's to stand on you, brother." Of course, the mere use of the word "brother" complicates the matter, but it seems as though Franz Ferdinand see themselves as alone, spearheads of nothing but their own guitar necks.
Another possible reason for this winter of Franz's pop discontent is their lack of being taken seriously by the record-buying public. People listen, people nod their heads, people dance, but at the end of the day, they dismiss the group as a frivolity. This is in part Franz's own fault, as they boxed themselves into a corner early in the fight with the nature of their poetic position: The "pop music" declarations ("pop" is too often interpreted as only chart-topping singles), their tossed-off swagger, and their piles upon piles of killer hooks. If music is easy to listen to, the conventional wisdom goes, then it must be hurting for depth.
Then again, the band must have known such a misconception would likely arise, as "Ich heiße Superphantastisch!" ("My name is Superfantastic!") a line from their self-titled debut, was never meant to carry the cultural weight of "Ich bin ein Berliner," John F. Kennedy's famous speech at the Berlin Wall.
They seemed to sense the impending downfall, so they filled "The Fallen," the lead-off track of their second record, with Biblical allusions, but too late: Listeners heard only the glitzy stabs of noise and danced along accordingly. Kapranos is a cobbler who made his own shoes a size too small, as opposed to, say, Conor Oberst, who made his a size too big. These are modest insights, to be sure, but they go a little ways into explaining the current Franz predicament.
So what does their third album, "Tonight: Franz Ferdinand," released Tuesday on Domino Records, serve to illuminate?
A lot, it turns out, and it validates even more. "Tonight..." kicks off in the fine new Franz style with "Ulysses," the lead single that debuted at number 20 on the Billboard charts a couple of weeks ago. It's a spare, bass-heavy, drug-deal-chronicling thing, with a just-above-a-whisper offering from Kapranos that explodes into shots of synth when he snarls, "C'mon, let's get hiiiiigh," before building to a foreseeable (but all the more thrilling) climax as the title character is simultaneously evoked and undercut with "You're never/ you're never/ you're never/ you're never going home/ not Ulysses, baby, no!"
As precarious as it is to allude to such a literary beast, Franz gets away with it, for as often as they're willing to acknowledge their art-world influences (see: much of their cover art; or, "Outsiders," where they reference the respective lovers/muses of Rodin, Man Ray, and Dali), they're just as eager to skewer the whole scene (see: "Do You Want To?" with lines like, "I love your friends/ They're all so arty, oh yeah"). One reviewer of their previous record wrote that if there are a finite number of hooks in the universe, every other band better watch out, and with "Ulysses," the table is set, as the guys of Franz have still got it: ear-worms and trip-wires litter "Tonight," needing only one listen-through to do damage.
"Can't Stop Feeling" is another such track, with its slinky buzzsaw of a riff, or the brash send-up "No You Girls," which you could imagine the Rockettes and Duran Duran having a dance-off to, if the drums were played with human bones, as they allegedly were on the recording. Elsewhere, the band's gritty sound that Lil' Jon dubbed "white crunk" crops up ("What She Came For"), and the lazy Cretaceous stomp of "Ulysses" is still discernible in other offerings like "Send Him Away," if not quite as pronounced. For the most part though, the electronic inclinations of production house Xenomania are the dominant sound here (see: "Lucid Dreams"), which, perhaps unsurprisingly, complements both the group's tendencies and Kapranos the vocalist: his svelte, detached style was probably not ever going to win the "Sam Cooke Award for Sheer Emotion," but damn does he sound good when he kicks a woman out the morning after.
All of the aforementioned strengths come to a head on "Bite Hard." Like "Jacqueline," the devastating opening track on their debut, "Bite Hard" begins with just Kapranos and a sole instrument (piano, in this case) before - uh-oh - that familiar throb begins, Paul Thomson's drums kick in, Kapranos namechecks "Heston with omniscient beard!" and the chorus explodes in a din of guitar crunch and synth lines. The song reveals Kapranos not as the metrosexual, mock-misogynist of the past but instead as the slyest sore loser in the world - just look to a gem like, "No I never resort/ To kissing your photo - honest/ I just had to see/ How the chemicals taste there, honey" for proof.
On the other hand, the only track that feels perfunctory thus far is the second one, "Turn It On," which ironically enough sounds like Franz doing a more whimsical take on the Arctic Monkeys, instead of the other way around, which is how it's supposed to be.
But what are we to make of the "pop" aspect? Well for the most part, "Tonight..." still retains the form. It still showcases plenty of riffs, verses, refrains, and general sense of melody. They seem to have perfected the difficult trick of constructing a mountain out of nowhere, then just as gracefully swan-diving off the other side.
But these are subtle subversions, not a radical change-up; fresh shades of grey between the pre-existing pillars of black and white musical construction instead of destroying the pillars themselves. For further enlightenment, we can look to a fourth Kapranos comment, this time on the concept behind "Tonight...": "Will it fit well on a greatest-hits? If not, then it shouldn't be on the album." (Well then, what's the eight-minute "Lucid Dreams" doing there, with its Justice-inspired electronic catharsis?)
Previous example excluded, he's right, for Franz Ferdinand songs have always worked better on their own than in the context of an album; if you'll forgive the vulgarity, they almost function as sonic ejaculations. And the same is true of this offering, pop shake-up be damned.
Its always disconcerting to see a band as obviously sharp as Franz choosing not to offer us art with the "high seriousness" that we demand of them. What then, we ask, is the greater purpose? You read Schopenhauer and then tell us you'd much rather just take the piss out of Andy Warhol's whole scene? So we sit here perplexed, resisting the inevitably irresistible urge to get out on the floor, as our four louche lads do what they do best, casting down hook upon hook from their pop podium, and, if they can even be bothered, maybe dance their way into immortality.
