By Kara Tucker and Deborah Sprague
Franz Ferdinand: Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action
DEB: When Franz Ferdinand slipped off the radar a few years ago, fans were left wondering what the heck was keeping them out of the fray – was it something pedestrian, like garden variety artistic differences, or a more intriguing predicament….say, Alex Kapranos battling chronic gout due to that restaurant critic moonlighting gig?
The emergence of Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Actions doesn’t answer that question, but it does deliver the same sort of synaptic jolt the quartet seemed capable of mustering up in their sleep around the time they threw down the gauntlet with “Take Me Out.” Just in the nick of time, too – the band’s unlikely blend of urbanity and hyper-activity is sorely needed in these days of faux-hick folksiness and geekily ironic twerk-fests.
The sleek-yet-sweaty tone is set within the first few bars of the de-facto title track, “Right Action,” which lopes along like some sort of bastard grandson of vintage Duran Duran and “Heart of Glass”-era Blondie – propelled by an irresistible bassline and Kapranos’ arch tones (which he wraps around such teasing lines as “come home, practically all is nearly forgiven”). It’s playful, but not altogether jolly, his smile framed by a slightly menacing wisp of Gauloises smoke.
“Evil Eye” ratchets up the rhythmic intensity and the verbal paranoia a level or two, conjuring a mood reminiscent of the Clash’s dancefloor endeavors circa Sandinista –without the unconvincing hip-hop veneer. That vibe, airy without being breezy, has long been a FF trademark, and they capture it more effectively here than on the disappointing You Could Have It So Much Better.
While the band uses a lot of primary colors here, concentrating on stark landscapes without too much detail, there are some bracing dayglo interludes as well – notably “Love Illumination,” which tosses simple, angular solos (both guitar and keyboard) into the mix, adding a spoonful of sugar in the form of lovely swinging sixties backing vocals.
Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Actions isn’t without its missteps – “Stand on the Horizon” aims for a languid ripeness but ends up collapsing under a leaden lattice of synths. “Fresh Strawberries” falls similarly short in its Kinks-wannabe jauntiness, a hollow sort of exercise that’s all too fitting for Kapranos’ blasé assertion that “I believe there’s nothing too believe.”
But that snide mindset doesn’t last long. The spaghetti-surf “Treason! Animals” – which could pass muster on one of those lost-gem garage collections, if not for Kapranos’ affably cool croon – ranks among their grooviest offerings, while the closing “Goodbye, Lovers and Friends” pokes the listener with lines like “I hate pop music…I hate bright colors,” all the while presenting both, deftly wrapped in a tantalizingly tasty shell and shimmering sexily in a way that would make Bryan Ferry smile.
KARA: Scotland’s Franz Ferdinand is perhaps testing to see just how short attention
spans can be in the world of 24-hour news cycles and 140-character bursts of
response.There was a four-year wait between their second album – “You Could Have It So Much Better” and 2009’s “Tonight.”
Now comes the Glaswegian’s fourth album after another four year wait.
Franz Ferdinand’s breakout hit – “Take Me Out” – off their self titled debut was a song full of hooks that also set the template for much of its approach. They specialized in angular post-punk you could dance to with hints of the UK pop of their forebears. Start the album, bop your head, shake your booty, maybe even a little air guitar to the occasional riff, done.
“Right Thoughts..” is not really a deviation from the bands formula for better and worse. When the songs click, catchy smart fun ensues – the kind to get you moving. When it doesn’t, the seams show.
Luckily, Franz Ferdinand has a pretty solid ratio of hits to misses.
“Right Action” starts the album off with an intro ready-made for handclaps and the album title being sung twice in the first 45 seconds. The lead single, it should fit nicely on a future best-of compilation for the band.
“Evil Eye” follows with a funkier feel. Alex Kapranos asks, “What’s the color of the next car?” and the backing voices answer “Red, ya bastard” and the song is off-and-going headfirst into ‘80s Land. The pull it off without feeling dated (no overly boomed up drums here).
Indeed, there’s a bit of spot the influence one can easily play with “Right Thoughts..” – “Oh hey! There’s a Bowie-esque croon! Oh, there’s a little New Order-style guitar!”
But to their credit, Franz Ferdinand manage to keep things from sounding too derivative, in part because they keep things moving briskly enough and in well-crafted fashion as to not sound like copycats.
“Stand on the Horizon” goes from a quiet ballad start (a relief in pace) before going into more familiar territory with that croon, even if it could use a touch more swoon.
Not every song works. “Fresh Strawberries” has the promising line of “Soon we will be rotten, We will all be forgotten, Half-remembered rumors of the old”, but the darker, gothy feel is lost with a sunny-sounded chorus. It’s a graft that doesn’t take.
“Brief Encounters” opens with a track that could be used to the theme for some basic cable show about space in the ‘80s before going into almost reggae-inflected Britpop. Again, the seams show.
On the other hand, the insistently catchy “Bullet” is about as subtle as its chorus implies. They WILL hammer this song into your brain, but it works in spite of its obviousness.
The final song on the album might just be the best, as it combines craft with refreshingly pulling back a touch. There’s a more subtle chorus to go with the reverbed vocals on the percussion-driven verses. It’s enough to make you wish for more subtlety elsewhere on the album.
At the end, Kapanos sings, “So sad to leave you. When they lie and say this not the end, you can laugh as if we’re still together/But this really is the end.”
It could be a break-up with a lover song or it could be a song about the period where the band was facing breakup rumors a couple years ago. Or it could just be more irony piled into a song where he croons about how he hates pop music.
It’s for the best that it’s not a song about FF’s current state of internal affairs. “Right Words…” isn’t quite a return to form as much as it is a simple return. A welcome return it is with pop featuring Brofolkian mandolin circles, teen pop with hip-hop-for-hire bolted on and, well, a certain celebrity offspring’s creepfest.
For its occasional faults, “Right Words…” is another solid effort.
Consider your head bobbed, your booty shaken and your air guitar strummed.
Song – Nine Inch Nails: Everything
“
Hesitation Marks”, Trent Reznor’s first album under the NIN name since 2008, will be released Sept. 2.
Three songs have been put out so far. “Came Back Haunted” is a mixture of synths a plenty, a chantable title in the chorus. The song’s over halfway through before the guitars kick in. It was a solid initial shot.
Copy A is somewhat of a grower with its paranoid feel, even if it isn’t prime NIN and sticks more to the light dance side of things.
Now comes…Everything. And, um, it’s, um, different.
It’s Trent Reznor goes pop. Seriously, the verses musically sounds like something someone would write for Katy Perry and the pitch altering on Reznor’s vocals becomes distracting.
Even when the distortion kicks in on the chorus, it doesn’t last, as guitars off a Cure record and layered harmonies appear.
Then distortion, then the “Hey, Think Katy Perry Would Like This?” verse again and then the Cure guitars and it’s all just disorienting.
Of course, odds were that Reznor wasn’t going to write the same way in his 40s that he did in his 20s. And maybe “Everything”, with its lyrics of trying to assure one’s self that things are good, fits better in context of the album.
Or maybe he’s just prepping us for a Slam Bamboo reunion.
But for now, we are left trying to absorb the fact that Trent Reznor has written a song you can do The Carlton to.
No comments:
Post a Comment