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Franz ferdinand band do you want to1/21/2024 The first bars of opener ‘The Fallen’ could almost be Kasabian. Then there’s the frantic punk of ‘This Boy’ and the Glasgow gothic of ‘Evil And A Heathen’ and ‘You’re The Reason I’m Leaving’. As well as ‘Do You Want To’, final track ‘The Outsiders’ sounds like a dislocated Blondie, while ‘I’m Your Villain’ achieves the same spacey funk David Bowie went for in his Berlin period – arguably the Rosetta Stone of all art-rock endeavours. The biggest departures from the first album (they’re all ballads of one stripe or another), they’re sufficiently anthemic to capture Killers fans’ hearts but with enough unexpected twists and turns to satisfy the art-rock hardcore.ĭespite joking that this album was “music for girls to cry to”, ‘…Better’ still has at least one foot on the dancefloor. You’ll have fallen for the fiendishly clever ‘Do You Want To’ by now, but get ready for Sad Franz on ‘Walk Away’, Wistful Franz on ‘Fade Together’ and Romantic Franz on ‘Eleanor Put Your Boots On’. You need to keep listening before Franz’s strongest-ever songs snap suddenly into focus. The initial effect is to make ‘…Better’ much more difficult to get into than the first album the tunes seem overwhelmed by all the extra decoration. Synths burble in the background of ‘Do You Want To’, a piano echoes through ‘Fade Together’ and there are vocal effects-a-go-go on ‘This Boy’ and elsewhere. The result is an album which radically extends the Franz musical palette. Earlier this year, Franz Ferdinand pronounced themselves dissatisfied with the clipped, sparse sound of their debut, so brought in Mars Volta producer Rich Costey. Instead, ‘…Better’ is bigger, stranger, more complicated, but with a darkly seductive current that pulls you under for good. The resulting record is a million miles away from the over-hasty follow-ups that hobbled former indie golden boys The Vines and BRMC’s careers, both of which sounded like collections of tracks left over from their first albums. Instead, he knuckled down, so determined that the second Franz album would be out this year that he missed guitarist and co-songwriter Nick McCarthy’s wedding. Having been round the block more times than a tramp’s dog, 33-year-old Alex Kapranos was never going to blow his last big chance. And just 18 months after their debut made them 2004’s most feted band, here comes the follow-up, titled ‘You Could Have It So Much Better’ after it clearly dawned on someone in the Franz organisation that titling it ‘Franz Ferdinand’ and giving it the same sleeve as the debut (albeit in different colours) as the band originally intended would, while cool, amount to commercial self-mutilation.Īnd Franz Ferdinand are too smart to do something like that. No, what we music fans need – nay, deserve – is more great records. The last thing we need is Franz imploding in a ’shroom and booze blitz. Where’s the passion, the sweat, the rock’n’roll? Well, who cares? Pete Doherty does the rock’n’roll thing these days (a condition which has its downs as well as ups, as any long-suffering fan will testify). Cold, calculating and too clever by half – that’s what some people say about Franz Ferdinand.
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