Our look at the closing lines of the biggest new-music reviews continues with a roundup of reactions to Tonight, the third studio album by the Scottish rock outfit Franz Ferdinand:
• “‘Lucid Dreams’ unexpectedly and thrillingly transforms midway through into buzzing, vaguely unhinged cosmic disco. ‘Dream Again’ is an appealingly off-kilter, vaguely dub-inspired electronic ballad. Both might point the way to Franz Ferdinand’s future: the shame is that they aren’t more representative of their present. Listening to them, you think: why didn’t you make a whole album like this?” [Alexis Petridis, Guardian]
• “As the band that provided the exclamation point to the post-punk revival of the early 00s, there was good reason to question Franz Ferdinand’s current standing in the pop world, now that that trend is on the wane. However, as it turns out, their return is perfectly timed to remind us that, in a world where UK rock is so uninspired the Brits were forced to make superstars out of Kings of Leon, you really can have it so much better.” [Stuart Berman, Pitchfork]
• “Those waiting for Franz to finally become the post-punk Bee Gees will lap up disco cuts like ‘Live Alone,’ but there’s just enough sulkiness to last a solitary ride home. ‘I never resort to kissing your photo,’ Kapranos sings on “Bite Hard.’ ‘I just had to see how the chemicals taste.’ A bit sour maybe, but alluring all the same.” [August Brown, LA Times]
Blood/Tonight/Whatever it’s called actually pretty listenable. Note that my playlists typically consist of Girls Aloud with a sprinkle of Fall Out Boy.
I really dig those synths at the end of Lucid Dreams.
i think this is an absolutely lovable record, and i can’t understand why the praise has been so faint. i mean, it’s not getting negative reviews, but the subtext of all of them is, “it’s nice, but we’ll forget about this in a month or two.” and speaking for myself, that’s not true.