Hurl whatever insults you must at Franz Ferdinand’s eponymous 2004 debut—homogenous, lightweight, soulless—there’s still no denying its songwriting technique. The robotic stomp of breakout hit “Take Me Out,” that year’s Village Voice Pazz & Jop poll topper, resonates just as sharply today. The same goes for leadoff cut “Jacqueline,” another tune with a deftly delayed payoff, and for theatrical-but-danceable numbers “The Dark of the Matinee,” “This Fire” and “40.”
It’s almost unfathomable just how far the Glasgow foursome’s compositional abilities have decayed in the five years since. Third LP Tonight: Franz Ferdinand marks a sharp decline even from vapid 2005 predecessor You Could Have It So Much Better, which barely qualified as a drink coaster. How does a band with so much promise turn out such dreck, and take so long doing it?
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There’s the universal possibility—that Franz’s members had stockpiled every decent idea for album No. 1, and that no writing binge could match wits with a lifespan of consideration. Or perhaps singer Alex Kapranos and guitarist Nick McCarthy erred by sharing the pen with their rhythm section, which has wiggled its way onto the credit sheet more often since the first disc .
We could talk specific tracks, but really, what’s the point? Ten of 12 cuts are predictable, lyrically limp trash-heap dance-pop, not worth swiping from a buddy’s computer if your MP3 player was already sucking down the hard drive. The two exceptions? The funked-out “What She Came For”—which opens with the sorta silly/sorta sly lines “I got a question for you/Where’d you get your name from?/I got a question for you/Where do you see yourself in five minutes?”—and the goose step-turned-electro vamp “Lucid Dreams.”
The final three minutes of the latter find Franz going all Justice with some badass grungy techno. It’s unexpected, and about the only signal the Scotsmen aren’t as lifeless as the Archduke from whom they borrowed their name.
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