Franz Ferdinand- Tonight: Franz Ferdinand
When Franz Ferdinand released their second album, You Could Have It So Much Better in 2005, it seemed like they had settled into a comfortable little groove. It offered up the same angular post-punk of their debut with a few minor curveballs. Tonight shows a completely different side of the band. Franz Ferdinand has always had elements of dance music in their sound, but Tonight is an overt dance album. It pulses with the kinetic nights and bleary eyed morning afters of club life.
Franz Ferdinand spent three years making this album, and have become students of the dance genre. Tonight glitters with icy synthesizers, artificial drumbeats and robotic guitar riffs. This record is completely fabricated, and yet Franz Ferdinand still sounds like a rock band. Drummer Paul Thompson uses a loose, swinging backbeat on many of the tracks, reminiscent of Some Girls era Stones. The electronic flourishes give lead guitarist Robert Hardy an added layer of muscle.
The most impressive part of Tonight is how the album is constructed. The album flows like an evening of night clubbing. The first single, “Ulysses” chronicles a marijuana fueled odyssey. The band chugs along with a reggae inflected groove that perfectly compliments the chronic haze described. Lead singer Alex Kapranos has found the perfect tone. He sings with a very detached monotone, perfectly capturing the vapid world of starry-eyed club kids.
The middle of the album deals with the club kid on the prowl. “What She Came For” starts with a walking bass line with flourishes of synth. Kapronos asks his potential partner where she got her name from, and what she’s going to do in five minutes time. His voice alternates between a macho baritone and a stuttering falsetto. The voice reflects both confidence and insecurity, which sums up the feelings of his character. He claims that the girl is looking for him, but clearly he is looking for the girl.
However, like most nights at the club, the adrenaline wears off. The morning after is chronicled in two subdued numbers, “Dream Again” and “Katherine Kiss Me.” “Dream Again” is reminiscent of New Order, composed entirely of ambient synth. “Katherine Kiss Me” tosses the synths aside in favor of an acoustic guitar. The lovelorn lyrics are quite sweet, but after a night of drug fueled pickups, it seems kind of disingenuous.
Tonight: Franz Ferdinand is a major leap forward for Franz Ferdinand. It’s a big risk for a rock band to make a dance record, and the eighteen months they spent recording it paid off. By taking their time, Franz Ferdinand has created an album that provides a snapshot of the impersonal glamour of club life in the late 2000s. Rock n’ roll began as dance music, and it’s great to hear a rock band make music that you can dance to again. It’s something that has fallen by the wayside, and hopefully this record will remind people of that. Now if only I could get rid of this wicked hangover.
